Shallow voters are those who believe whatever the most monetarily-eager advertisers want them to believe.

Jangan sandarkan demokrasi pada “political marketing” semata. Percuma kalau bungkusnya bagus, isinya kosong atau bahkan busuk!

The right choice is always better than the political choice!

The more money a candidate spend on his campaign, the more cautious we should be!

Throwing more money on political ads won’t solve anything at all! Throwing ideas and solutions will do!

What should be raised in democracy is public debate! Not campaign spending, nor political ads!

Democracy should be safeguarded by ideas and ideals! Not just cheesy political marketing nor baseless claims!

Political decency is totally different than political toady! Differentiate them!

When political ad spending is way ahead more expensive than the money spent on public debate, our democracy has fallen into plutocracy!

Our value in democracy shouldn’t be judged with how much money we have. It should be judged by how much ideas we generate!

My tweet is not political campaign nor negative campaign, this is what we call civic education within a democratic society.

All the singing, shouting, tacky comments and hundreds of unnecessary interruptions show it all—there has got to be something really wrong in our political system.

The election had cost us more than 6.7 trillions Rupiah, a number that is roughly the same amount as the controversial bailout fund, but no one seems to realize that the election gave us nothing more than a crowd of inept politicians—surely not the best example of a wise spending if we mind to take a look at the output.

To start from a very simple thing, what we need in our House of Representatives is simply a strict floor management of the House. Enforcing detailed and strict rules of procedure is a vital in a room full of politicians (not to mention the comedians and those who sang their own Party’s march).

The weak leadership of the Speaker of the House might possibly be rooted on the lack of a clear and detailed set of rules and code of conduct.

It is obvious that the plenary session of the House failed to enforce a standardized procedure in every phase of the session. The rules keep changing, even for a very simple thing such as to determine the lists of speakers. It might also be a good idea for the House to adopt the rules and mechanism of filibuster from the US Congress to accommodate those who wants to speak hours to deliberately obstruct the political process on the floor—at least it is better than a wild and chaotic effort to delay the decision making process just like what we saw yesterday.

The second is political management. Redundant speeches from members of a Fraction are a solid proof that there were no effective internal political consolidation took place that night. Fraction should have an effective management system to conditioned their Party members and consolidate their standing position towards the issue.

What makes it so chaotic was that everyone wants to grab the microphone and speaks—even when they have nothing to say about the substance of the meeting. They redundantly make a long speech about things that has been said before by their colleagues.

The media also has their fair share to blame to give the public a biased report, exaggerated editorial and often irrelevant comments. One thing they did it right was they aired it live.

The third one is the lack of political loyalty—or value in a bigger picture.

When it comes to political backstabbing, ask Prosperous Justice Party (PKS). The decision made in the plenary session baffled the public which boats do they belong to. Hypocrisy is a thin-line away from the noble value they always proud of.

Is this what we call political dynamics? I prefer to call this political drama.

Dynamism is a good thing when it comes to politics, but what we’ve seen in the last two weeks is not dynamism. It is simply pragmatism—plus a bit of political immaturity.

Seeing parties changing course that easily is an obvious example of how our politics lack of value. Too many parties in a system make it more difficult to hold on to certain ideology. When all parties become catch-all party, that is a time when our politics lost its value.

It seems to me that Party’s platform is nothing more than just a slogan embedded in their headquarters lobby. They can easily hop on-and-off to another coalition or party blocs without having to consider their ideologies, platforms or programs. Any political moves taken by our political parties seem to be more of an impulsive pragmatic action rather than a sincere strategic moves to defend the people’s right.

Last but not least are those who sit in the House themselves. Needless to say, the public is smart and wise enough to judge their capacity by now.

This is the failure of our political system. It constructs an electoral regime that is not only failed to provide an adequate quality control for those who want to participate in the very center of the government, but also enforcing political populism that is misleading for the public. The result—as we watched in gapped—is troublesome. Not only a bad civic education, but simply an ugly political reality show to watch.

This should not be the way to run our democracy. Our best stake now is an electoral reform to prevent this from happening again in the next five years. ***

After a decent dinner (where he paid me for our bet), we chatted all night long about Indonesia’s politics. It was such a lively chat we had. We disagree on almost every matter; except one—we agreed that Indonesia’s politics is getting more and more similar to what Indonesians call as sinetron (soap opera).

To see how our politics have become more melodramatic than ever before, we can simply take a look at the latest development of it. Surely there were a lot of surprising moves in the last five days.

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) flirted with Democrat Party, leaving the public gapped to see how easy it is for their political parties to change its course and lost its consistency as an opposition.
Another maneuver was taken by SBY who has finally decided his running mate, Boediono, a well-known economist and the governor of the central bank—and more importantly, an independent with no party affiliation.

It turns out that this maneuver has led us into another scene of our political drama. An angry voice came up from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) who threatened to leave the coalition if SBY keeps Boediono as his vice president nominee.

PKS vice secretary general angrily saying that SBY did not have an appropriate manner when it comes to political communication with his own coalition bloc. This, again, leaves the public amazed on how immature our politics has become.

Some might call this a political dynamics; I prefer to call this political drama.

Dynamism is a good thing when it comes to politics, but what we’ve seen in the last two weeks is not dynamism. It is simply pragmatism—plus a bit of political immaturity.

For me, seeing parties changing course that easily is an obvious example of how our politics lack of value. Too many parties in a system make it more difficult to hold on to certain ideology. When all parties become a catch-all party, that is a time when our politics will lost its value.

It seems to me that party’s platform is nothing more than just a slogan embedded in their headquarters lobby. They can easily hop on-and-off to another coalition or party blocs without having to consider their ideologies, platforms or programs. Any political moves taken by our political parties seem to be more of an impulsive action rather than strategic moves based on their party’s platforms.

This has also clearly shows us that our politics is all about power—well, it is always about power—but what I’m trying to say here is that when a party can easily shift to the center, left or right, they have forgotten their platforms to a point where they are just looking for a bigger part of the pie, and not thinking about the noble task beyond it.

When they have forgotten their own party platforms or programs, what can they offer to the people? Aren’t those two is the most important things in a political campaign? If that is the case, then this might be an explanation on how come we never heard of any platforms or programs debate to be put front-and-center on every campaign.

Sure they put a small fraction of time on it, but the biggest proportions of any campaign are dangdut performance and t-shirts throwing time. These two are the things that they offer to the people. In Indonesia, parties programs or ideology is not as effective as dangdut and t-shirt.

Why bother to give them any explanation on your party’s programs or public debate about it when you can just put a well-known singer or comedian as your legislative nominee? This has proven to be the best way to gain more mass without having to think about any complicated solution to our nation’s most pressing problems.

Clearly this is not a good example on how politics should run. This is not a good show to watch and more importantly, this is not a good civic or political education for the people.

Talking about sinetron, they only need a play with strong-imaging and stereotypical characters on it, exaggerated emotions, and sensational storyline, right? Aren’t that our politics have become? ***

Three days ago there was something interesting on my Facebook news feed: a message from Facebook Site Governance asking me to join the group and cast my vote on two documents, the Facebook Principles and the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibility.

Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of this phenomenal social networking site, thinks the population of the “Facebook Nation” has grown so big that it needs more open and transparent governance. With a population of more than 200 million netizens worldwide, Facebook would be the fifth largest country in the world.

To take a step closer to the Democratic State of Facebook (as I’m calling it now), Zuckerberg proposed a more democratic approach to govern the Web site. He introduced the two aforementioned documents and let the netizens make comments, recommendations and proposals to alter them, then redrafted each and let users vote on a soon-to-be “Facebook Constitution.”

I really wish our own democracy could be that simple and effective.

But here’s a switch: We spend more and more money on our system, but we get nothing except violence, stagnancy and those eye-poking posters of the candidates all over our streets. I think it fair to say that these are the accurate snapshots of our democratic practices today.

Challenged by the present condition of our democracy, we might want to ask whether the current architecture of our democracy is just hideous or if it there is something real in it that we can pin our hopes on.

Our current system of direct elections seems to reduce the dominance of the power elite so that today everyone can join the hype and be a candidate. Consequently, now we have legislative candidates from literally any background — from a parking man to a media mogul. Even a criminal with a written record of smuggling weed joined the competition. If that counts, then “various backgrounds” will have a whole new meaning for our democracy.

These might be good examples of how participatory democracy is practiced in Indonesia, but the downside of having too many doors open in our system is that we can no longer have a credible quality control to filter our candidates.

Many, if not most, of the legislative candidates were inexperienced, lacked basic knowledge of legislative activities or were simply uneducated. Today we have quite a number of candidates that come from nonpolitical backgrounds, including those who are still very young and many more who are entertainers and comedians with no experience in politics.

Sure, they are full of ideals and fresh ideas, but real politics needs more than just ideals and ideas. Our democracy should not be the big and expensive joke we’ve seen in the last four months.

What awaits election winners in the next four years is noble yet delicate work. It requires no less than legal drafting ability, an understanding of how our political system works and a comprehensive grasp of the issues waiting to be resolved. Will they be able to perform well in the next four years? I doubt it.

Today’s elected legislators are the product of a troubled society. Those who nominate themselves without knowing what the job is all about and those who chose to vote for candidates they barely know — it’s like a blind date. The result is likely to be troublesome.

Consider this too: The people who spent millions or even billions of rupiah to put their faces on those corny political posters are the same people who will control our legislatures for the next four years. I simply cannot trust them to handle this enormous responsibility while the thought front and center in their minds must be on first recovering their campaign expenses in any way possible.

If one thinks that our recent legislative elections were a total disaster, then something has to be changed. But can we do that when our law-making process soon will be in the hands of the product of a troubled democracy?

This is not an overly pessimistic view or an attempt to underestimate those who will soon be legislators. This is a wake-up call for anyone out there who still believes in a better way to practice democracy. Even Facebook has a better way to run its democracy. Why can’t we fix ours? ***

For those of you who are wondering why I haven’t updated my blog in recent time, I’ve been occupied with my trip plan to the United States for the HNMUN.

I’m writing this post on a flight to New York. Still 4 more hours to JFK.

Its quite an experience to have my first trans-atlantic flight. I think the last time I had a long flight was when I went to Europe ten years ago. 18hours straight and I was just a kid at that time, so I wasn’t quite paying attention to the flight.

Now I’m having my 14 hours flight from HKIA to JFK. At first I thought this will be a devastating flight, because my Jakarta-Hongkong plane was a bit uncomfortable. Fortunately, Cathay use a different plane to take me to JFK. Its packed with great private entertainment system eventough Im in the economy class. You can watch their vast collection of movies, TV drama and news with your own LCD and remote. I spent my early hours watching FRIENDS and the Simpsons. You won’t notice that you’ll be flying for 14 hours across the arctic outskirt.

As I check the inflight information, the temperature outside the plane is now -64C. I’m near above the border between US and Canada now. Its getting freezing inside the cabin. Just before I started to write this post, I put my winter gears on to avoid long-line outside the toilet before the landing.

Anyway, my trip plan for the next 2 weeks would be packed with interviews schedule for my thesis. I decided to write about the US foreign policy decision making, so I wouldn’t waste this opportunity to get the words from the source.

The last days of my 2 weeks would be in Boston as I will be attending the Harvard National Model United Nations. Delegates form UNPAR got to represent Senegal in this year’s HNMUN. And me myself will be in the Historical General Assembly, simulating the past UN conference. What makes me so excited about this MUN is that the topic in my committee would be the Arab-Israeli Six Days War in 1967 which I think pretty much relevant with present condition.

Well, I think that is all for now, hopefully I can continously documenting my trip to this blog as soon as I can find internet connection to send my post. I’ll spend my last 3 hours in this plane to watch Eagle’s Eye.

Another interesting news from IHT:

[…..And then she thought, how about putting some atheist messages on the bus, as a corrective to the religious ones?

And so were planted the seeds of the Atheist Bus Campaign, an effort to disseminate a godless message to the greater public. When the organizers announced the effort in October, they said they hoped to raise a modest $8,000 or so.

But something seized people's imagination. Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and last Wednesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.

"There's probably no God," the advertisements say. "Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."…..]

In a time when the world needs God more than ever before, they managed to rise more than $200.000 campaign to deny God’s existence. Fantastic!

Yesterday I had a late conversation with two of my best friends, Ben and Rean about everything. From intolerable shopaholic behavior of our friend who just bought a bag for 17millions rupiah (for God sake!!), to Palestine-Israel war to the latest stupidity of Indonesian government on destroying the Majapahit site. And we agreed on one thing: the world is sick.

That is why I believe that God (not religion) is now needed more than ever before. Human is now facing one of its hard time. Let’s make a list of some: global warming, lethal diseases on the rise, depletion of oil (and still no feasible alternative), food and water crises are soon to be next global agenda (or next war-trigger), corrupted governments everywhere—not to mention war-addict government, terrorism on the rise, xenophobes are now a common thing and many more; feel free to add some.

Who don’t need God when everything seems falling apart? Well…I’m no big fan of religion but I completely believe in God. I believe that there is one single omnipotent power on whom we can rely on, who create the grand-design of all this mess beautiful life and also have the power to fix all these. Call me naïve, but that is what I believe.

Anyway, I’m not going to discuss about God on this post, as it must be an endless discussion, a cliché that human must follow when they want to reach the truth about God’s existence.

What I want to highlight here is the robust freedom of expression that the British has shown to us in this matter. I think it is amazing to live among societies who are so open-minded to accept even the most sensitive things to be challenged in such public display.

I’m getting sick to see those fundamentalist movements here in Indonesia who always judges everyone with their religious affiliation. We see many examples of this on the Palestine-Israel issue, when suddenly the Islamic movements everywhere poured in to streets and shouts “KILL ISRAEL” and “SAVE PALESTINE”. The worst part is that they don’t know the issue that well when we actually ask them what are they struggling about!

Ben told me this in our last night conversation, that he asked one of the protesters in Bandung about what is actually he stands for. Well, not a surprise, he don’t know sh*t about Israel-Palestine war. All he knows is that Israel kills Palestine (a.k.a Muslim) and Israel should be killed for that. That is more than enough reason for him to join the ‘laskar’.

I dreams on when will our society can have such open-minded tolerance, with fair observation and logical reasoning, instead of religious verses and superstitious foretell….will we have that kind of luxury…?

________________________ 

***On a lighter side, it is funny if you read the article and pay attention to the slogans the atheist used in the bus. Here are some:

“There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

“Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.”, the ads read, over a picture of a man in a Santa suit.

“Atheism: Sleep in on Sunday mornings.”

DEAD FRED PEN HOLDER

One word for this wacky pen holder: AWESOME!! Turn your desk into a crime scene! It’s always cool to have a red dead body on your desk…plus it holds pen too.

DEAD FRED PEN HOLDER in action. Classic yet classy!

ANTI-GRAVITY GLOBE

This SUPER COOL GLOBE is a must-have for diplomat-wannabe students! I have to put this globe in my desk if someday I work in the UN!

They come with two versions as you can see in the picture. I think the first one is much more futuristic. But here comes the great part: these electromagnetic suspended globes are actually high-tech instruments. A magnetic field sensor continually measures the height at which the globes are suspended. This sensor feeds that data into a micro computer in the base of the unit. This computer then calibrates the electronic magnets at the top of the frame based on the distance between the globes and the top magnet to keep the globes correctly positioned. All in the blink of an eye! So not only do these look great on the desk levitating in thin air, they are also technology marvels! Once it’s levitating, we can even spin it slightly and watch the globes rotate for extend periods of time. Just like the real thing!! Coooolll…love this one!!!

MATRIX CUBE ALARM CLOCK

A sleek design with techie touch alarm clock. Connected by thin ribbon cables, each clock module can be stacked vertically, horizontally or in a pyramid, depending on your mood. Very stylish to put in my computer desk!

PUZZLE CALENDAR

Another wacky thing! Not only does the Puzzle Calendar keep your brain wrapped around your busy schedule, but it keeps your fidgety fingers occupied to rearrange the blocks to change the look of your calendar each month. Another cool feature is that you can use the icon blocks to flag special events! This calendar has 77 tiles with dates, days, blanks and icons to describe your month. Check out your old calendar now, if you still have a lot of free time, go get this stuff! Now you’ll be occupied!

SPACE AGE ANT HABITAT

This miraculous gel, derived from a NASA Space Experiment, serves as both habitat and nutrition for your ants - allowing you to watch in awe as they turn a brick of aqua-blue gel into a fascinating colony of tunnels. What can be more futuristic than having a thing from NASA Space Experiment in your desk?? Plus, the blue gloomy light will add some shade of space-age in the room. This is on my number two wish list, right after the levitating globe!!

This AntWorks is based on a 2003 NASA Space Shuttle experiment to study animal life in space and test how ants successfully tunnel in microgravity. The AntWorks Gel (non-toxic) is complete with nutrients to promote healthy growth in the new colony. The magic gel is also included on the package. However, ants are not included.

DANCING DESKTOP JELLIES

Another cool thing to decorate your desk!! This desktop tank holds three jellyfish which “swim” around the tank (thanks to a gently contrived current). In the top of the tank are 6 bright LEDs, which let you set the mood. You can either have them blend softly from one color to the next, or stop on your favorite color. Cool enough to put side-by-side with the ants colony!

‘MY DOCUMENT’ LAPTOP SLEEVE

The “My Documents” folder on your laptop’s file system is the location where most of your files live. The whole “folder” metaphor was first developed by Xerox Parc for its ground-breakingStar desktop system. Those folders were designed to mimic the real-life paper-and-manilla-folders offices use to file paperwork. Now, that metaphor is carried on by all graphical user-interfaces. No matter what operating-system you’ve got on your laptop, you’ve probably got something like a “My Documents” folder. And they figured, why not extend that already abused metaphor by storing the device that stores your “My Documents” folder in a “My Documents” folder of its own?

The inner fleece lining keeps everything shiny and scratch-free. Plus, they’ve included the pixilated cursor-pin to ram that concept home.

Very creative and fun product! The bright yellow color makes it even more fun to carry on. Guaranteed to turn heads when you pull your laptop out!

USB BEVERAGE COOLER

What is really cool about this cooler is its cool retro styled and the cool small blue LED inside. It will helps your drink stay cool while makes your desk looks even cooler than ever before! Love this one too!

MATH QUIZ CLOCK

No description is needed for this one. It’s a VERY-COOL-NERD-CLOCK to put in your room! Just remember to bring pen and paper (and calculator) every time you ask for time and look at this clock. Because you definitely needs to finish the quiz first before you know the time! Added to my wish list!

Israel’s raid on Gaza, now in its 5th day, continues to dominate international politics in the end of 2008. Condemnation and critics have been delivered to Israel’s brutal acts on Palestinian’s Gaza.

Here in Indonesia, Palestine-Israel war is a sensitive issue for most of the students, particularly those who associated with Islamic organization. Students are now gathering up to condemn Israel, burned Israel’s flag along with the US star-stripped flag. Some of the Islamic fundamentalist group here in Indonesia even organized an open-recruitment for those who want to volunteer—not for humanitarian purposes, but to help Palestinians wipe Israel out of the map.

Palestinian hatred toward Israel

Frankly speaking, I’m no fan of those fundamentalist movements. I’m a Muslim, but for me they’re just plain stupid to think that they can help Palestinian to achieve peace by going there and join the Hamas. Trapped in some short-sighted religious fundamentalist group will get you nowhere near peace, it will only make you even more brainless thanks to their indoctrination process.

More and more hatred towards Israel is, I believe, the ultimate obstacle for Middle East hope for peace. The recent air-strike is the latest example of how Hamas was doing no good at all for the Palestinian.

Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a six-month cease fire agreement with their barrage of rockets attacks into Israeli territory. There can be no justification for Hamas’ rocket frenzy within the corridor of the cease-fire agreement on June 19 and its refusal to stop its violence approach toward Israel. There is no use of getting elected and govern to reach the goal of a sovereign Palestine by keep sending your neighbor deadly rocket attacks. Hamas is too arrogant to let ordinary Palestinian live in peace and side-by-side with Israel.

Friends and family of Irit Shitrit, 39, Ms. Shitrit was killed by a Hamas rocket in Ashdod on Monday.

And for Israel, they might have the right to defend themselves and targeting the Hamas, but launching a full-scale air attacks on Gaza strip and hoping that they will only hit Hamas without doing any bad for the civilians is somehow unacceptable. Gaza operation is provoked and a disproportionate response. Israel was also never really lived up to its commitment to lift its punishing embargo on Gaza.

Another point to be added for Israel—especially for the government—is the poor attempt to gain votes for the upcoming election. Yes, ironically, attacking the Palestinians is highly favorable for the Israelis. And this might be a good reason for the Defense Ministry-Ehud Barak, and Foreign Minister-Tzipi Livni to continue their hawkish plan only to gain more votes.

Too much to blame for this mother-of-all-conflicts, yet there is no use of blaming anyone. It will not resolve anything for the sake of the peace process. All I’m trying to do here is to balanced up the opinion among Indonesians *particularly those fundamentalist* who always thinks that religious bond is on top of everything and they’re free to be subjective on all matters.

SITUATION UPDATE

Excerpt taken from the International Herald Tribune: The United States has blocked approval of a UN Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, diplomats said.

French UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, the council president, said the 15 council members could not agree on a statement in closed discussions held after Israel launched a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip on Saturday. But he said there were “strong convergences” among the members to express concern about the deteriorating situation in Gaza and the need for “an immediate, permanent and fully respected cease-fire.”

Libyan Ambassador Giadalla Ettalhi said the United States during the discussions late Saturday objected to “any outcome” on the proposed statement. He said efforts were made to compromise on a weaker press statement but there was no consensus.

Several other council members, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations were closed, also said the U.S. was responsible for the council’s failure to issue a statement.

Some comments on this article heavily stressed on the needs of diplomacy to resolve the conflict, me included. But the recent update from UNSC seemed to blow our hope on the use of diplomacy. Or at least, UN diplomacy. On a different note, this is an undeniable example on how badly we need the UN reform, but that’s a whole other debate.

On the situation, I’d like to point out that the United States had (again) unfairly use their political resources over UN to halt any resolution that might hurt their ally’s (Israel) interest. They made a big point of blaming Russia for overreacting to the sudden attack of Georgian troops on the enclaves South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August. Considering the death toll and physical destruction in Gaza, why has the US not decried the Israeli onslaught as a disproportionate use of force in response to Hamas’ rockets? 

I’m not going to refer this as a ‘double-standard’ of how US judge and react to Israel’s military action. They only have one standard to comply with: their national interest; which includes to protect their ally.

What is left for diplomacy might be multilateral engagement with 3rd-actor country as a peace-broker. Jimmy Carter managed to brokered this Middle East peace in his era when the infamous ‘Camp David Accord’ took place. In 2000, Bill Clinton managed to invite Israeli PM, Ehud Barak and the late Palestinian Authority Chairman, Yasser Arafat, in the negotiation table. Unfortunately, the negotiation came out without any agreement reached.

Today, US under Bush regime has showed us how reluctant they are on this issue; the recent UNSC failed-attempt to reached resolution was the proof. There are ongoing buzz on how Obama might want to step in to this conflict and  pursue his stated goals of calming the Middle East through diplomacy. Does he has the chance with all these circumstances?

After all, it is ironic that Hillary (as the next Secretary of State) will have to deal with the same problem as what Bill faced in his era. Well, you know what they say; ‘history repeats itself’, and, ‘Clintons are destined to clean-up Bushs messes’. (George H.W. Bush was succeeded by Bill Clinton and Bill inherited his post-Desert Storm problems). Hopefully Hillary will do the job better than Bill, don’t let the irony failed her job to ease the tention, and last but not least, is to repress Israel’s agressive movement.

In my personal opinion, it is better to have neutral country to broker the peace. Certainly not the Egypt and the US. France might be a good idea, or maybe, Indonesia?

[All images are courtesy of The New York Times, taken from here]

Ukraine natural gas supply was cut-off by Russia’s state-owned oil company Gazprom on Thursday. It is reported that Gazprom has reduced its natural oil export to Ukraine by 90 million cubic meters per day. That amount is approximately the average daily consumption of the country which currently is at the peak of its winter consumption.

This incident occurred after negotiation over prices and transit fees unraveled between Ukraine government and representative of Gazprom Russia.

The most disturbing issue of EU’s energy dependence is Russia’s carelessness to use pipelines as political instruments. Russian “pipeline politics” date back to 1990, when Moscow interrupted energy supplies to the Baltic States in attempt to stifle their independence movements. The energy weapon was again used against the Baltic States in 1992, in retaliation for their demands that Russia remove its remaining military forces from the region.

But the major wakeup call for the EU is the Ukrainian gas crisis in 2006. The shutdown resulted in significant supply disruptions for several member states, raising awareness that dependency on Russia has increased EU’s geopolitical vulnerability and has placed energy security to the forefront of the EU agenda.

The concern over this cut-off is now raising anxiousness among the Western European countries as Ukraine is the transit point for Russian gas export to Western Europe. If the cut-off continues, western part of the Europe will be left on a freezing winter this year. It might even cause severe damage for the industry that badly needs the gas supply for their operation.

The energy security and struggle for energy independence will always be the key problem of energy and economic policies of any state; it might be even more critical in the upcoming years.

With that kind of leverage over energy, foreign energy supplier like Russia can cut-off their energy supplies to their European counterpart anytime they want. Moreover, they can simply interrupt the supply line as a deterrent to the importing countries to impose their national interest.

This issue has been a major problem for EU foreign relation with Russia. As Russia gains their old glory by drilling their way helped by the oil-driven economy, more foreign policy clash occurred with the EU as well as US.

The unavoidable fact for Ukraine, as well as other European countries, is that Russia with its abundant oil and gas resources has become major supplier for the region. While Russia is not a traditional ally of the Europe, there are concerns that Russia will use this energy leverage as a political instrument to influence the region with its own political agenda.

The latest outbreak in South Ossetia was an obvious example of how EU could not conduct its foreign policy effectively. No firm action towards Russia at that time, presumably because of the energy dependency issue.

Energy has now become one of the most high-profile tradable goods in world market. It is now a state’s major concern. Competition to secure strategic energy asset is a must. States will have to strive to get energy sources, whatever the cost is.

For EU, this will only leave them with two options: to be energy independent, or jeopardizing its foreign policy by keeping the energy dependency.

[Image taken from here]

When the decision came out and words were spread around, it was not a surprise for me to see the United States president-elect Barack Obama named as the TIME’s Person of the Year 2008. It is obvious that Obama was on top of the list from the very beginning.

For all his record-breaking achievement and breath-taking moments in the election, it is the notion that he inspired the world and raised hope to millions of people with his infamous campaign theme of ‘CHANGE’ that he deserves all these praises. Now as the inauguration day comes near, the question remains on how well can Obama fulfill the high expectation that the world has for him. With all the mess the Bush left for him, Obama will have to work really hard to clean it up.

One thing beside economy that has been in the spotlight since Obama elected as the next US president is his foreign policy credential. In the campaign trail, his foreign policy inexperience had been a major argument for his opponent to discredit his nomination. In a time where the world is in its crossroad, having a president with little foreign policy experience is somehow unacceptable.

Sure he gets all the luxuries of being a president in the mightiest  most troubled country on earth. The protection, the flying hotel/war room Air Force One, the White House, the media, the football bag and nuclear launch code strapped on it. It seems like the world is in his hand. But here is one thing for sure: the next four years for Obama is going to be a lot harder than the rough campaign he had.

The moment Obama is sworn in, he will officially become the man with the most difficult job to do on earth: fixing the unraveling economy, sorting out mounting debts his country has, containing the unemployment problems, figuring out the unfinished war in some of the world’s hottest zone, fixing the damaged reputation of his country in the last eight years, and not to mention the recent outbreak of violence in Middle East as US closest ally, the Israelis, bombard the Palestinians Gaza Strip.

As Friedman put it: It’s time to reboot America.

With that kind of challenges, can Obama fulfill the expectation?