Quoting: biznews Last year, analysts Andrew MacIntyre and Douglas Ramage published an essay for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute titled provocatively Seeing Indonesia as a normal country. Well, where's the fun in that?

We don't think of Indonesia as a rising economic power. Its output ranks only 15th in the world (a bit bigger than ours). Its market ranks 18th (a bit smaller than ours). But Indonesia is changing. Yes, there was a terrorist attack in Jakarta last month, but that was the first in four years. It has just held free elections for president and legislature that gave an emphatic mandate to its modernising moderate leader, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, for a second five-year term.

Indonesian grievances over alleged theft of its songs and dances to promote Malaysian tourism may have some basis in fact. Given the way Malaysia treats its Hindu minority and obliterates its own Hindu past, it can scarcely claim the pendet dance from Bali. But Indonesia really has only itself to blame for the fact that its vast and diverse culture is so little known in the outside world that Malaysia can appropriate it without anyone other than Indonesians noticing.

TEMPO Interactive, Palangkaraya: The Governor of Central Kalimantan, Teras Narang, has threatened that he cancel the permits of some plantation companies working in the region. This is because they are suspected of burning land and creating thick smoke that has created problems for air transportation. The companies include PBS as well as other Oil Palm plantation companies.