The fact that he may have used the blogger of the week entry to jump on a soap box and make points about anonymous blogging, is once again a case of his blog, his right. My stats would suggest that at least sum of you fine readers swung by to check my blog out, some stayed and commented and some disppeared as quickly as they arrived!

I do not give the proverbial rat’s arse whether you blog anonymously or not. It does not matter. If you feel that you can only give more credence to what is said by someone who posts under their own name, so be it! Do not underestimate our reading public, the vast majority are much more discerning than blindly accepting what is written as the truth!

With respect to stereotyping. Stereotyping just clouds the real issues that we confront daily and detracts from reasoned argument. It is better we confront stereotypes and those that make them with a view to breaking them down and exposing them for what they are. But I am not going to engage in petty name calling or anything else.

You want to pick me on the colour of my skin rather than the content of my arguments, then you should expect to get as good as you give when I point out the narrowness of your arguments.

But the comments have digressed from the original point of Mas Fatih’s original post, which was highlighting my excellent musings as blogger of the week!

Cheers,

Rob

However, your “Orient” comment (among others) is so much more offensive that Ong’s “observer” email. Especially since Ong put himself in that observer category.

You need to fix your attitude.

Well, some bloggers have attitudes too, ryosaeba.wordpress.com for example. But he’s consistent and he doesn’t take offense as easily as you. And he doesn’t mix his rationale with his emotions.

http://www.jakchat.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/62291

http://treespotter.blogspot.com/2007/09/on-indonesian-bloggers.html

My mind still boggles from what I read so far.

Treespotter probably said it best about you :

You are just one twisted and gruntled old bigot, sadly. You keep talking about not discriminating people etc. etc. and yet, you persistently, over the years, over singling me out for one thing or another, why because i’m brown?

I personally think you need to relax a bit more and don’t try to read too much about everything.
You ended up contradicting yourself about many things, PestaBlogger for example (insult to you or finance transparency or what?)

And we knew how PestaBlogger ended up - we got acknowledgement from minister of communication (among many other things) himself.

Jakartass, you need to be a bit more positive. I’m sure you’ll be able to accomplish so much more that way.
Stop looking down on us from your high chair (Free expression, as afforded by the internet, is generally a new concept here in the, erm, Orient) and start working together with us to make Indonesia a better place. I know you can.

Right, you preaches freedom of expression but yourself can’t take criticism ?

As is, Fatih’s criticism to anon bloggers may seem strong. But if you put the context (only political & religious topic), then it makes more sense.

So I was lost when you gave example from a literature instead.

To make it clearer, try reading these posts as well :

http://treespotter.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-indonesia-matters.html

http://harry.sufehmi.com/archives/2006-07-18-1212/

This is an example of an abuse of “freedom of speech”, bordering on hate speech.

Otherwise, like Fatih, I’m absolutely fine with anonymous blogging. Especially for whistleblowing.

I don’t think I get the point of the article or at least it’s not lucid.

Would Indoneisan Literature have existed without the use of the pseudonym. Please reflect upon how Multatuli, Rivai, Munsji, Tan Boen Kim and Wiggers used their anonymity to help fight just causes and live as writers.

#have you read all articles the link of which are given at the end of the posts. if not, please do. if you have, you might’ve missed the important points and thus reread them.

#oh my, you seem harder to understand than i expected. sorry.

To J, thanks. Some people are just dumb to realize that there is a universal free speech.

But the way this writing is aggregated in blog-indonesia.com makes me sick.

Trust me, had I blogged anonymously, my writings in this blog would’ve never aggregated in blog-indonesia.com, globalvoicesonline.org of USA and agoravox.com of france. Also Koran Tempo and some foreign journalists would’ve never interviewed me, Tempo magazine would’ve never put me in the first place of its top ten blogger indonesia. See my About page for more. Some people may enjoy–to some extent– the writings of anonymous writers but some–including me– do not. as simple as that.