April 7, 2015 edition

A great leader departs, Lee Kuan Yew dies; and then what? One hopes: an empty seat.
The world acknowledges Lee's greatness as the builder of Singapore: he laid the foundations that made his country, the tiny former British colony with no natural resources, manage over the last ten years to overtake the United States in prosperity.

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More Sidelines articles in other editions

January 1, 1970 edition

I want to be free of everything
Independent
Also from Ida
-Chairil Anwar, July 14, 1943
But not everyone is like Chairil Anwar.
Seventy two years after this poem was written, it seems as though there are people who do not want to be free, are afraid to be free, tired of being free, and who regret that people are free.

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January 1, 1970 edition

I do not agree with the death sentence. When I was not even six, my father was executed by the occupying Dutch forces. Whenever shots are directed at killing someone, there are destructive side effects. Our family did not regret that our father had met his death in that wayhe was not a criminalbut, stealthily, the trauma left its mark. Even though it changed.
My case was not extraordinary. Hundred of thousands, millions of Indonesian children and mothers experienced this. Indonesian history is built out of millions of shots and death.

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January 1, 1970 edition

"I can well imagine an atheist's last words:
White, white! L-L-Love! My God!"
-Life of Pi
Atheism is a kind of faith. An atheist believes that God does not exist. An atheist is not an agnostic, who holds no belief.

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January 1, 1970 edition

A man from the country stood before the gate and said to the sturdy man standing there who he guessed was the guard: "I have come to see the State. I would like to enter."
The probable-guard (dressed in black, a uniform perhaps) scrutinized him for a moment, then answered, "Sorry. There are procedures."

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March 3, 2015 edition

Power engulfs people with solitude, and sometimes curses them with loneliness. This can happen to leaders anywhere, but only one novel has managed to depict it: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's famous work.

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February 24, 2015 edition

Where do police come from?
The story goes that the first police were in the Majapahit era, when the Prime Minister Gajah Mada formed the Bhayangkara armed forces to safeguard the security of the kingdom. I do not have enough knowledge to prove whether or not this is just imagination. But what does seem to have escaped this history is the importance of distinguishing between a 14th century kingdom and a 21st century republic.

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