Blasphemy and Judicial Legitimacy in Indonesia

When contentious blasphemy laws are pressed into service in fledgling democracies with illiberal tendencies such as Indonesia, critical questions arise about judicial integrity and the political nature of blasphemy trials. Judicial legitimacy in Indonesia is defined according to international standards and conventions. The focus is on judicial propriety rather than the popularity or majoritarian appeal of court decisions. In May 2017 a watershed moment occurred in Indonesia as the former governor of Jakarta Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (popularly known as Ahok) was found guilty of desecrating religion and sentenced to 2 years in prison. Judgments rendered in politicized blasphemy trials such as these fail to meet standards of impartiality, and when discursive transgressions of a blasphemous nature occur there are deep ambiguities of meaning and intent. This paper contends that the revival of blasphemy as a punishable crime relates to political power calculations and electoral opportunities, and offers an analysis of blasphemy in Indonesia through the quasi-historical lens of a discursive crime premised on the fallacy that religious offence threatens public order. Blasphemy trials are further complicated by the fact that religious authorities and Islamic mass organizations in Indonesia have significant influence over judicial processes

Spiral Waves in Media with Complex Excitable Dynamics

The structure of spiral waves is investigated in super-excitable reaction-diffusion systems where the local dynamics exhibits multi-looped phase space trajectories. It is shown that such systems support stable spiral waves with broken symmetry and complex temporal dynamics. The main structural features of such waves, synchronization defect lines, are demonstrated to be similar to those of spiral waves in systems with complex-oscillatory dynamics.Comment: to appear in International Journal of Bifurcation and Chao

Spatial opinion dynamics and the effects of two types of mixing

Spatially situated opinions that can be held with different degrees of conviction lead to spatiotemporal patterns such as clustering (homophily), polarization, and deadlock. Our goal is to understand how sensitive these patterns are to changes in the local nature of interactions. We introduce two different mixing mechanisms, spatial relocation and nonlocal interaction (“telephoning”), to an earlier fully spatial model (no mixing). Interestingly, the mechanisms that create deadlock in the fully spatial model have the opposite effect when there is a sufficient amount of mixing. With telephoning, not only is polarization and deadlock broken up, but consensus is hastened. The effects of mixing by relocation are even more pronounced. Further insight into these dynamics is obtained for selected parameter regimes via comparison to the mean-field differential equations

SPATIAL PATTERNS AND PHYSICAL FACTORS OF SMOKEJUMPER UTILIZATION SINCE 2004

This research examines patterns of aerial smokejumper usage in the United States. I assess landscape and environmental factors of their deployment using a detailed nine-year record of smokejumper activity in combination with terrain, fuels, and transportation network data. Specifically, the research seeks to identify commonalities in location (proximity), terrain, fuels, fire occurrence, and accessibility of smokejumper actions that inform current usage and identify opportunities for improved utilization. Terrain parameters (steep, rugged, inaccessible) of the western U.S. were classified and a baseline travel time grid was created (30 meter resolution). Fires in which smokejumpers responded were compared with all fires that occurred (Fire Program Analysis Fire Occurrence Database) on the same landscape during the same time period. Most (96%) aerial smokejumper actions (2004-2012) in the western U.S. and Alaska were recovered from the Smokejumper Master Action Database and used in this analysis. Results reveal differences between incidents in which smokejumpers were used when compared with total fire load. In the context of total fire load smokejumpers are dispatched to fires in steeper (+117%), rougher (+100%), and higher terrain (+51%). Additional analysis reveals that smokejumpers are utilized further from roads (+375%), on landscapes that are harder to access on foot (+473%), and on incidents that are proximal to bases where jumpers are stationed (-33%). The identified patterns in smokejumper utilization provide a systematic assessment that helps explain where and how smokejumpers are currently being used. The research also quantified the occurrence of steep, rugged, and inaccessible terrain across the western U.S. and showed that more than half of the western U.S is within a 20 minute walk of the nearest road and 83 percent is within one hour. The most remote location based on Euclidean distance is in the Thorofare Basin of Yellowstone NP (21.5 miles). Based on hiking time, the most difficult to reach location is near Halfway Creek between Fish Lake and Moose Creek in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness (29 hours). The travel-time results have utility beyond smokejumping in the areas of wildlife management, recreation, and search and rescue. This study provides the groundwork and takes an initial step toward the culminating goal of improving the efficacy of the U.S smokejumper program and the wildland fire community as a whole