Category: Indonesia
Several years ago, I spoke to two members of Allende’s government. Two who managed to survive. One of them recalled: “They used to threaten us, before the coup, before that terrible September 11, 1973: ‘Watch out, comrades, Jakarta is coming!’” “We did not know much about Jakarta then,” he confessed. “Only that it was the Read more…
David Callahan: The Most Important Labor Strike in the World Is Happening Right NowMillions of workers across Indonesia are joining a national strike this week to press for a higher minimum wage and universal health coverage. This is actually a big deal for Americans, not that any of us are paying a lick of attention. Why does a giant strike in Indonesia matter? Because the United States stands Read more…
Bali, Indonesia: When you arrive in Bali, the most diverse and popular of Indonesia’s 7000 plus Islands, you are immediately confronted with a just constructed state of the art vast airport with an arrivals area designed to accommodate thousands of visitors and conference delegates. It had its inaugural run a week earlier for the Ms. Read more…
This is the story of how the Syrian war reached out 5,000 miles across the globe and destroyed at least 29 Lebanese lives in the Indian Ocean. It is a story of tragic irony; the destitute Lebanese families who wanted to live in Australia and left their arid villages in the hills of the northern Read more…
Adam Payne: Twenty Years Of Peasant OrganisingBetween the 5 and 14 of June, La Via Campesina, the global peasants union, held its 6th international conference in Jakarta, Indonesia. Alongside 500 delegates from member organisations around the world, two representatives from the recently affiliated ‘Landworkers’ Alliance’ in the UK joined the gathering. La Via Campesina (literally ‘the peasants’ way’) is an international Read more…
Peter Storm: Battlefield Indonesia: Resistance To Corporate DestructionThe protests against fuel price hikes in Indonesia are merely the latest outburst of resistance to corporate destruction in both city and countryside. Price rises are provoking revolt in yet another country. This time, it is Indonesia, the price hike concerns fuel, and the revolt takes the form of rallies and strike action. The unfolding Read more…
: Groups Call on U.S. to Condemn Indonesian Attacks on Peaceful Demonstrations in West PapuaThe East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) and West Papua Advocacy Team (WPAT) strongly urge the U.S. government to condemn the unwarranted assault by Indonesian government security forces on peaceful May 1 demonstrations in West Papua. They called for U.S. security assistance to be curtailed, absent an end to such egregious human rights violations Read more…
Could two men, no matter how dedicated and outspoken they are, save the city of 12 million that has for years looked and smelt like a decomposing carcass? Could they reform the savage capitalist system that cannibalized this entire urban area and the rest of the country for decades; could they reprimand all the actors Read more…
Ian Duff: How KFC Is Junking the JungleNo matter what you think about fast food, you’ll no doubt agree that rainforests shouldn’t be trashed to make packaging destined for the trash. But that’s exactly what’s happening. Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) is supplying KFC with packaging products that are made from Indonesia’s rainforests. The original Colonel Sanders couldn’t have imagined the Read more…
Why is the New York Times concealing the key role that the United States played in the 1965 coup in Indonesia that ended up killing somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million people? In a story Jan. 19—“Indonesia Chips Away At the Enforced Silence Around a Dark History”—the Times writes that the coup was “one of the darkest periods in modern Read more…