A woman walks pasts a digital screen displaying the movement of Indonesia Stock Exchange composite index on June 25, 2025.

Indonesia’s market fever needs a credibility cure

Investors need one of two things: better returns to compensate for risk, or lower risk to justify staying. Indonesia is giving them neither.

1 week ago

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The key forces now shaping markets and geopolitics

The world is in turmoil, yet financial markets are riding high. Are investors wrong, or is the picture more complex than this seeming contradiction suggests? ...

1 week ago

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Chess, blunders and the art of getting back in the game

In economics as in chess, a bad move changes the game, but the real blunder is refusing to adapt when the board shifts. ...

1 week ago

The Latest

Strong together: Defense Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin (left) and Japan’s Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi inspect the honor guard on May 4 during a welcome ceremony at the Defense Ministry office in Jakarta.

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How Japan is boosting defense cooperation with Southeast Asia

As Tokyo modernizes its Indo-Pacific strategy, a wave of new defense pacts and potential submarine exports marks a bold shift in Japan's military partnerships across Southeast Asia.

1 week ago

A group of people take a walk on May 20, 2022, in the Katingan Mentaya peatland, Southeast Asia’s largest, situated between two rivers of the same names and spanning over 150,000 hectares across the districts of Katingan and East Kotawaringin in Central Kalimantan.

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Trading our future: The financialization of nature

As governments turn forests into tradable carbon assets, local residents and indigenous communities are paying the price for a corporate climate shortcut that trades genuine emission cuts for green labels.

1 week ago

Farmers loosen soil using water flow from an irrigation canal in Batang regency, Central Java, in an aerial photo released on May 19, 2026. Agriculture Minister Andi Amran Sulaiman has said the government is allocating around Rp 5 trillion (US$282.28 million) for irrigation programs and the distribution of superior seeds to address potential drought caused by the upcoming El Niño weather system.

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Why water could help restore trust in global cooperation

Water can become an example of how multilateralism can still deliver tangible results in people’s daily lives.

1 week ago

Environmental activists march on Sept. 27, 2024, against 10 years of Joko “Jokowi“ Widodo's presidency's administration, criticizing the worsening climate crisis and democratic backsliding, during the Global Climate Strike 2024 action in Jakarta.

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SLAPPs: How ASEAN can shield its environmental defenders

While Southeast Asian nations promote green growth, their legal systems are being weaponized against the very people fighting to protect the region's climate-vulnerable landscapes.

1 week ago

Litmus test: Students take the Academic Competency Test (TKA) on Nov. 3, 2025, at State Senior High School 1 in Enrekang Regency, South Sulawesi.

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TKA 2026: An early warning for Golden Indonesia vision

TKA 2026 proves Indonesia can measure learning at a massive scale, but if the government cannot fix the stark literacy and numeracy deficits revealed by the data, the promise of "Golden Indonesia 2045" will give way to a staggering demographic burden.

1 week ago

Good shepherd: Pope Leo XIV arrives on June 3, 2026 for the weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.

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One year of Pope Leo XIV: Human dignity in a fractured and technological world

In a world fractured by polarization and driven by rapid technological acceleration, Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical delivers a timely, powerful reminder: no advancement must ever overshadow the intrinsic value of human dignity.

1 week ago

A resident of Belangian village stands on Aug. 21, 2024 next to a tall benuang laki (Duabanga moluccana blume), a native evergreen species, in the Kahung tropical rain forest of Banjar regency, South Kalimantan.

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When science is rewriting Global South diplomacy

By leveraging data-driven frameworks like the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, Brazil and Indonesia are proving that the Global South can ditch traditional geopolitical competition and use science diplomacy to protect the world's most vulnerable ecosystems.

1 week ago

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi reviews a guard of honor on May 2, 2026, during a welcoming ceremony at the Government Office in Hanoi.

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Japan and Asia’s new balance

Tokyo is not wringing its hands; it is acting to defend itself and help others secure themselves against Chinese expansionism and the US volatility.

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Myanmar military soldiers stand next to Starlink devices on Oct. 20, 2025, seized during a raid on the KK Park online scam center in Myawaddy, Karen State, Myanmar.

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Why normalizing Myanmar’s junta is a strategic capitulation

Thailand and other ASEAN members may be tempted to treat the junta’s staged transition as a way out of the impasse. But normalization would reward the main driver of Myanmar’s regional crisis.

2 weeks ago

A military officer blocks a projector to shut down a public screening of the documentary Pesta Babi on May 12, 2026, at Khairun University in Ternate, North Maluku. Authorities halted the event under the pretext that it lacked an official permit.

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'Pesta Babi' and the fear of a thinking Papua

By dismantling the state's engineered conflict narrative, the Pesta Babi documentary has terrified elites who realize that a critical, thinking Papua is an existential threat to the extraction of its wealth.

2 weeks ago

A customer scans a code of Japan's Unified QR Code (JPQR) to make a payment using the Quick Response Indonesia Standard (QRIS) on Aug. 25, 2025, at the World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.

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Digital sovereignty is in the fine print

Most countries rely on cloud infrastructure and software platforms owned by a handful of powerful tech firms, leaving governments at the mercy of foreign corporate behemoths.

2 weeks ago

A Citilink plane taxis as a Super Air Jet plane lands on Jan. 10, 2025, at Soekarno-Hatta international airport in Tangerang, Banten.

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A new aviation plan key to fixing Indonesia’s skies

To fix high ticket prices and bridge an archipelagic nation, Indonesia must move past reactive policies and treat its aviation industry as a strategic tool for national unity.

2 weeks ago

Activists and supporters take part in a protest in Manila on Feb. 23, 2026, to demand justice for the victims of extrajudicial killings during the drug war of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

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Finally, a truth commission on the Philippines' drug killings

The new truth commission, which has been created independently of government, may finally deliver restitution to the nameless dead and in doing so, restore moral weight to the living.

2 weeks ago

A bus travels on a road on Oct. 18, 2020, toward near Cirebon-1 coal-fired power plant in Cirebon, West Java.

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The broken promise of coal transition finance

The $20 billion climate flop: a flagship plan to phase out coal in Indonesia hasn’t shut a single power plant.

2 weeks ago

The plenary session meets at the COP30 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Para state, Brazil, on Nov. 22, 2025.

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Indonesia has to seize the moment to shape global carbon economy

As a climate crisis and geopolitical instability collide, Indonesia must stop acting like a passive observer and leverage its massive green potential to rewrite the rules of the global carbon economy.

2 weeks ago

A diplomat briefs Indonesian fishers on migrant worker protection and safety on June 23, 2024, at the Indonesian Consulate General in Cape Town, South Africa.

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After the state and the owner, who protects fishers?

Behind the record-breaking profits of Indonesia’s industrial fishing fleet lies a predatory system of legal fictions and debt bondage that leaves the very workers fueling the industry with less than the price of a pack of cigarettes.

2 weeks ago

A National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) researcher works in a laboratory at Soekarno Science and Technology Zone in Cibinong, West Java, on July 5, 2023.

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The academic fraud in Copenhagen was years in the making

When a university system prioritizes metric-driven visibility over scientific veracity, AI stops being a tool for discovery and becomes a frictionless shortcut for institutionalized fraud.

2 weeks ago

United States President Donald Trump reacts during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on May 27, 2026.

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Building alliances of among US allies

In a world in which the US cannot be counted on as it once was, the objective is not stability at any price, but rather stability on terms consistent with national and Western interests.

2 weeks ago

Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words “Artificial Intelligence“ (AI) in this illustration created on Feb. 19, 2024.

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Small caps are AI's big winners, but for how long?

Many of the biggest winners from the current wave of AI mania lifting Wall Street to new highs aren't the multi-trillion-dollar hyperscalers, but small caps. The question now is whether that can last.

2 weeks ago

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar attend a joint press conference after attending the Quad Foreign Ministers' meeting on May 26 at Hyderabad House in New Delhi..

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Quad FMs set tone of continuity in New Delhi

The Quad is evolving from a politically symbolic coalition into a functional strategic mechanism.

2 weeks ago

Police officers stand guard during a rally organized by university students in front of the East Java Regional Legislative Council (DPRD) in Surabaya, East Java, on Aug. 19, 2025. During the rally, protesters called for the government to scrap its controversial national history book project and push for protection of freedom of expression.

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Pedagogy, the classroom and the banality of violence

When education is weaponized to manufacture hate, classrooms become the breeding grounds for state violence, a sobering reality that demands a radical shift toward a humanizing, critical way of learning.

2 weeks ago

Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai arrives at the Human Rights Ministry office in Jakarta for a press briefing on May 4, 2026.

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Human rights reform must preserve independence

How can an institution tasked with monitoring state power be required to obtain approval from the very executive branch it is meant to oversee?

2 weeks ago

United States President Donald Trump (left) greets Chinese President Xi Jinping in events at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on May 14, 2026, during a trip focused on trade, regional security and strengthening bilateral ties between the world’s two largest economies.

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Reading between China's red lines

Multiple red lines send mixed signals. Is the country drawing them determined to assert its global power, or is it in the grip of a national paranoia?

2 weeks ago

A woman places a hand on her head in front of an electronic information display on April 8, 2025, showing movements of the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) Composite index at the IDX headquarters in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta.

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The market as an unlikely ally against democratic backsliding

When democratic institutions are dismantled in plenary chambers, the language of capital translates political overreach into economic ruin and in doing so, creates a powerful new battlefield for change.

2 weeks ago

Workers sort packages for shipment on Aug. 30, 2023, at the warehouse of e-commerce giant Shopee in Cengkareng, West Jakarta.

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Beyond trade platforms: The sovereignty question behind e-commerce

E-commerce increasingly shapes the conditions under which market participants compete.

2 weeks ago

Quiet devotion: Muslim pilgrims from various countries prepare to perform evening prayers on May 13 at the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Indonesia’s Haj and Umrah Ministry said that ahead of the peak of the haj, the movement of pilgrims to Mecca continued in stages.

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When faith meets heat: Rethinking haj and climate risk

Sound haj governance should no longer be measured solely by how many pilgrims can be dispatched abroad each year, but also by how responsibly societies adapt to worsening environmental conditions.

2 weeks ago

A vendor prepares drinks for customers on May 23, 2026, during a power outage in Nagari Kasang, Padang Pariaman, West Sumatra.

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Blackout in Sumatra and the threat to Indonesia's energy transition

Indonesia’s power system is still built on a decades-old paradigm, a handful of large power plants strung together by long transmission lines, with limited flexibility and little redundancy.

2 weeks ago

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