Fear and loathing in Jakarta, CNN style

Fear and loathing in Jakarta, CNN style

How appropriate that The Sunday Post, July 11 edition has
"blessed" us with two articles that clearly link up the circle of
fear and loathing that have cemented the international image of
Indonesia as a haven for terrorists over the past two years.

David Kennedy's "In tense times, demand up for expat counseling"
(page 4) puts a real face on the underlying current of paranoia
that has run through the expat community since the Bali bombings
in 2002 and the subsequent blast at the JW Marriott last year.

If this can be considered as the "effect" of the terror
phenomenon, the "cause" can be found a few pages further on in
the fawning, puff piece of a book review by Rich Simons of The
Seeds of Terror, penned by CNN's Jakarta Bureau Chief Maria
Ressa. One need not wonder why the shrinks are having such a
field day when a collection of misinformation, disinformation and
highly questionable "intelligence" leaks such as Ressa's tome is
taken as literal fact.

More than any single person, Ressa, through her voice on CNN,
has been responsible for sowing those "seeds of terror" amongst
the foreign community here and the international community that
has resulted in irreparable damage to the image and reputation of
this country. Potential investors and tourists in droves have
given Indonesia a big "miss" due to the unsubstantiated
perception of the country as a hotbed of radical Islam with ties
to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.

The truth is that this connection has never been proven; not
in the Bali bombings or the JW Marriott bombings, both of which
have been decreed by Ressa to be not only al-Qaeda linked, but
suicide attacks, a claim for which there is no forensic or
eyewitness evidence. In her book, Ressa, an American of Filipino
descent, has relied not on her skills as an investigator, but
almost exclusively on information provided by CNN intelligence
sources, the same folks who brought us the case for weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq.

While she has spent several years roaming the region as a CNN
correspondent, Ressa seems to have learned little about internal
political strife in either Indonesia or the Philippines, or if she
has, tends to ignore it for the larger, "big picture" aims of CNN
and its unabashed support for the Bush administration's
"war against terror".

The problem is that at least 90 percent of the information, as
leaked to Time magazine and sister media outlet CNN, turned out
to be provably and outrageously false -- black propaganda to
those in the spy trade. But then, how could one expect Ressa or
anyone else to get the truth on this story when al Faruq has been
held incommunicado by U.S. intelligence since he was unlawfully
spirited away from Indonesian authorities?

As we are beginning to see in the aftermath of the Iraq
invasion, intelligence is often skewed and manipulated to suit
geopolitical goals. That's fine; we have always known that
governments lie. But we expect better from the press, which is
supposed to give us a balance. Maria Ressa, and by extension
Rich Simon, have failed us in that respect.

JOEL D. PALMER
Jakarta