Jakarta Quotes

How simple life is. It's as simple as this: you're hungry and you eat, you're full and you shit. Between eating and shitting, that's where human life is found. - (Houseboy + Maid, in Tales from Djakarta)

‎Bagiku modernisme adalah nihilisme. Atas nama modernisme, orang-orang Jakarta siap melucuti seluruh pakaiannya di muka umum, namun atas nama modernisme pula orang-orang di Papua berlomba-lomba menutup seluruh tubuhnya dengan pakaian.

Jakarta itu cinta yang tak hapus oleh hujan tak lekang oleh panas. Jakarta itu kasih sayang.

Dijual: kelas sosial. Siapa mau beli?

Tiap orang, sebagaimanpun kita mengenalnya, selalu jauh lebih dalam dari yang kita pikir.

Cuma orang sakti yang bisa bertahan hidup di Jakarta.

American movies, English books - remember how they all end?" Gamini asked that night. "The American or the Englishman gets on a plane and leaves. That's it. The camera leaves with him. He looks out of the window at Mombasa or Vietnam or Jakarta, someplace now he can look at through the clouds. The tired hero. A couple of words to the girl beside him. He's going home. So the war, to all purposes, is over. That's enough reality for the West. It's probably the history of the last two hundred years of Western political writing. Go home. Write a book. Hit the circuit.

You will be so dead, dear Sister. Make telpon dari tadi kayak Kroasia ada di sebelah Jakarta aja. Huahahaha

Tapi, yang lebih menakutkan dari apapun yang pernah kita takutkan adalah kalau kita terus-terusan merasa takut.

You're damaged too. But that's what makes you special. Some things are better damaged.

Kadang-kadang, orang membaca buku supaya dikira pintar. Lalu mereka membaca buku sastra terkenal, buku yang mendapat penghargaan. Dan, meskipun mereka ngga menyukainya, mereka bilang sebaliknya karena ingin dianggap bisa memahami sastrawan kelas atas. Ini adalah hal bodoh. Jangan pernah membaca karena ingin dianggap pintar; bacalah karena kamu mau membaca, dan dengan sendirinya kamu akan jadi pintar.

Jakarta telah menjadi sekadar tempat bertahan hidup, bukan tempat hidup yang mampu memberi arti keberadaan kepada penghuni yang tinggal di dalamnya.

Dulu saya pikir Indonesia itu Jakarta. Pemahaman saya tentang Indonesia itu absurd.... Setelah saya keliling Indonesia, saya paham betul bahwa tidak mungkin Jakarta jadi tolok ukur untuk menggambarkan Indonesia karena sangat tidak mewakili Indonesia secara keseluruhan.

Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported—what the rich countries said, rather than what they did. That group was annihilated.

Yang terinjak telah melawan, dan yang melawan telah terinjak.

Jakarta. Aku setuju. Kota ini biangnya dualisme. Antara ingin Timur dan berlagak Timur, sembari terdesak habis oleh Barat sekaligus paling keras mengutuk-ngutuk.

I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder -- alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware -- is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.

Tumbuh dewasa rasanya seperti itu. Waktu masih kecil, semua orang perhatian. Tapi, begitu dewasa, sedikit demi sedikit, kamu hilang dari pandangan.

There is a reason Mary is everywhere. I've seen her image all over the world, in cafés in Istanbul, on students' backpacks in Scotland, in a market stall in Jakarta, but I don't think her image is everywhere because she is a reminder to be obedient, and I don't think it has to do with social revolution. Images of  Mary remind us of  God's favor. Mary is what it looks like to believe that we already are who God says we are.

I fear that the truth of what happened contradicts so forcefully our idea of what the Cold War was, of what it means to be an American, or how globalization has taken place, that it has simply been easier to ignore it.

Lain kali, jangan terlalu takut sama orang. Just remember, prinsip kehidupan itu sama seperti ketika berpapasan dengan ular: yang satu sama takutnya dengan yang lain.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

I guess it could be worse. My name could be Tlaquepaque, or Irkutsk, or Pyongyang. Or, you know, Pittsburgh. Sometimes I flip through the atlas just to remind myself of all the names that would be worse than mine.

They are living out their last years in a messy, poor, crony capitalist country, and they are told almost every single day it was a crime for them to want something different.

Well, mungkin kesedihan nggak usah dijadikan alasan untuk membuat orang nggak nyaman. Kita semua pernah sedih, dan kita boleh merasa sedih; just don’t bum each other out too much over it

I have never learned how to arrange my face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know—that super-relaxed, totally-in-charge expression which makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of a riot in Jakarta. Oh, no. When I don’t know what I’m doing, I look like I don’t know what I’m doing. When I’m excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently,I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought. As David once put it, “You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like . . . miniature golf face.

Hari ini, di pemakaman, ada orang yang dikubur, dan ada orang yang mengubur. Namun sepertinya, kematian mengambil keduanya —satu orang mati dan satu orang hidup. Bukan sepenuhnya salah kematian, kurasa. Kematian hanya mengambil satu dari mereka. Masalahnya, yang ditinggal masih berusaha mengejarnya, berharap kematian mau mengembalikan apa yang ia ambil.

Meskipun ada mayat di dalam lubang kubur, tetap sulit menentukan siapa yang baru saja mati.

Le premier verre est aussi doux que la vie, le deuxième est aussi fort que l'amour, le troisième est aussi amer que la mort.

Saya nggak tahu. Kamu juga nggak tahu. Tapi, kita nggak akan pernah tahu akhirnya kalau kita bahkan nggak memulai, kan? Kita akan selalu berpikir kalau ada sesuatu yang salah dengan kita; dan mungkin saja memang ada. Tapi, terus kenapa?

Mungkin iya, suatu hari aku mau jadi petani. Mencangkul sambil menyanyikan lagu-lagu AC/DC, kayaknya gagah sekali. Aku baca di koran, katanya pembangunan mal di Jakarta masuk rangking sepuluh besar di dunia, dan orang-orang bangga. Aku justru heran, sebenarnya itu kemajuan atau kemunduran, sih?

Indonesia pada masa orde baru adalah dunia koneksi yang maha besar. Orang-orang di Jakarta, misalnya, membagi masyarakat dalam dua kategori, kenalan dan orang tidak dikenal.... ` Dunia koneksi ini dibangun berdasar gagasan keluarga.

The United States won. Here in Indonesia, you got what you wanted, and around the world, you got what you wanted. How did we win, I asked. You killed us.

Everyone's damaged in their own way

Richards remembered the day - that glorious and terrible day - watching the planes slam into the towers, the image repeated in endless loops. The fireballs, the bodies falling, the liquefaction of a billion tons of steel and concrete, the pillowing clouds of dust. The money shot of the new millennium, the ultimate reality show broadcast 24-7. Richards had been in Jakarta when it happened, he couldn't even remember why. He'd thought it right then; no, he'd felt it, right down to his bones. A pure, unflinching rightness. You had to give the military something to do of course, or they'd all just fucking shoot each other. But from that day forward, the old way of doing things was over. The war - the real war, the one that had been going on for a thousand years and would go on for a thousand thousand more - the war between Us and Them, between the Haves and the Have-Nots, between my gods and your gods, whoever you are - would be fought by men like Richards: men with faces you didn't notice and couldn't remember, dressed as busboys or cab drivers or mailmen, with silencers tucked up their sleeves. It would be fought by young mothers pushing ten pounds of C-4 in baby strollers and schoolgirls boarding subways with vials of sarin hidden in their Hello Kitty backpacks. It would be fought out of the beds of pickup trucks and blandly anonymous hotel rooms near airports and mountain caves near nothing at all; it would be waged on train platforms and cruise ships, in malls and movie theaters and mosques, in country and in city, in darkness and by day. It would be fought in the name of Allah or Kurdish nationalism or Jews for Jesus or the New York Yankees - the subjects hadn't changed, they never would, all coming down, after you'd boiled away the bullshit, to somebody's quarterly earnings report and who got to sit where - but now the war was everywhere, metastasizing like a million maniac cells run amok across the planet, and everyone was in it.

Kenapa dunia begitu kejam terhadap orang-orang yang berani mengungkapkan perbedaan seperti dirinya? Mengapa orang-orang seperti dirinya tidak bisa diterima baik layaknya orang biasa yang hidup berpasang-pasangan dengan lawan jenis? Apa yang salah dengan memiliki orientasi yang berbeda?

Mengapa nasib begitu kejam terhadap mereka? Mengapa ia tidak diiberi kesempatan untuk menyatukan kembali cinta mereka?

We move forward step by step, we can’t expect the world to turn over as easily as we turn the palm of our hands.

Tanpa kawan, kebebasan hanyalah penjara besar dalam bentuk lain dengan tembok-tembok khayali yang menyiksa.

Berkeley Mafia,” a set of economists trained at the University of California who worked with Suharto.

Tapi, selayaknya pacar tak jadi, gue akan step back kalau lo sudah menemukan yang lebih baik.

The Delta agent saw my itinerary and said, 'You’re flying to Jakarta via Atlanta, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur? You must have really pissed off your travel agent.

operations for Clocktower Jakarta, massaged

Every year, visit Singapore, Jakarta, Addis Ababa, Lagos, Mumbai, Ho Chi Minh City, and Silicon Valley. Each is creating the future in very different ways.

The manager had just returned from a hospitality conference in Jakarta, where he had learned that the main duty of hotel staff was not to deliver but to over-deliver.

Washington's violent anticommunist crusade destroyed a number of alternative possibilities for world development. The Third World movement fell apart partly because of its own internal failures. But it was also crushed. These countries were trying to do something very, very difficult. It doesn't help when the most powerful government in history is trying to stop you.

It’s not that I had more important things to do or that I didn’t want to help with whatever problems were interfering with her students being successful—rather, it’s this horrible truth that life has taught me: misplaced hope is the most devastatingly painful thing you can give someone.

We obviously don’t live in a perfect world. If we did, then my dad would never have volunteered for Vietnam so he could use the GI Bill to pay for college, Uncle Google would have more important things to do than searching for eight hundred million reasons why our schools suck, and I wouldn’t be at an education leadership conference in Jakarta because there’d be no need for it … right?

Tumbuh dewasa rasanya seperti itu. Waktu masih kecil, semua orang perhatian. Tapi, begitu dewasa, sedikit demi sedikit, kamu hilang dari pandangan. Makannya, orang dewasa pakai make-up, berdandan rapi, pakai baju bagus ... Karena kalau ngga, ngga akan ada yang melihat mereka. Penampilan, bagi orang dewasa, itu seperti baju untuk manusia transparan —membuat orang sadar kalau mereka ada. Karena biasanya, di dunia orang dewasa, orang-orang ngga punya cukup perhatian untuk menunggu kamu bicara dan bilang kalau kamu ada.

As far as we know, this was at least the third time in history that US officials had supplied lists of communists and alleged communists to allies, so that they could round them up and kill them. The first was in Guatemala in 1954, the second was in Iraq in 1963, and now, on a much larger scale, was Indonesia 1965.

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Throughout the Americas, from Canada down to Argentina, European colonization killed between fifty million and seventy million indigenous people, around 90 percent of the native American population. Scientists recently concluded that the annihilation of these peoples was so large that it changed the temperature of the planet.

Some people said that he went to Jakarta to get away from Iteung. Some said that he was trying to get away from the whole business with the Tiger. But he told Gecko before he left: “I won’t come back until my dick can get hard.

Presiden memang orang yang praktis. Tidak seperti mereka yang memperjuangkan hidupnya di pinggir jalan berhari-harian. Kalau engkau bukan presiden, dan juga bukan menteri, dan engkau ingin mendapat tambahan listrik tigapuluh atau limapuluh watt, engkau harus berani menyogok dua atau tigaratus rupiah. Ini sungguh tidak praktis. Dan kalau isi istana itu mau berangkat ke A atau ke B, semua sudah sedia, pesawat udaranya, mobilnya, rokoknya, dan uangnya. Dan untuk ke Blora ini, aku harus pergi mengelilingi Jakarta dulu dan mendapatkan hutang. Sungguh tidak praktis kehidupan seperti itu. Dan kalau engkau jadi presiden, dan ibumu sakit atau ambillah bapakmu atau ambillah salah seorang dari keluargamu yang terdekat, besok atau lusa engkau sudah bisa datang menengok. Dan sekiranya engkau pegawai kecil yang bergaji cukup hanya untuk bernafas saja, minta perlop untuk pergi pun susah. Karena, sep-sep kecil itu merasa benar kalau dia bisa memberi larangan sesuatu pada pegawainya.

Antar-jemput di Jakarta biasanya dilakukan dengan mobil. Suatu kali seorang pria muda kelas menengah berkisah, suatu keluarga yang tidak memiliki mobil di Jakarta akan merasa miskin.Pengamatan sepintas saja terhadap jalanan di Jakarta sudah meneguhkan pendapat itu.

Saimun pondered. How come that when something is difficult to get or you don’t have it, and you just get a chance to taste it for a moment, a small matter can become so big, doubling, trebling, growing ever larger? This morning one kretek cigarette dominated his whole soul. As if his life depended on one cigarette and if he could get that cigarette his life would be prolonged, as it were, for ever. One cigarette could fulfill his existence.

Dan kau telah menjadi begitu mirip dengan dunia itu sendiri; karena keberadaanmu begitu baik, sementara ketidakpedulianmu begitu kejam. Namun, saya memilih untuk menerima apa yang diberikan dunia ini kepada saya; yaitu kau, dan kemampuanmu menghancurkan hati saya - sedikit demi sedikit dan setiap waktu.

Orang-orang Jakarta tetap merajut dan memperluas jaringan melalui semua jalur yang tersedia, sejauh itu memenuhi kepentingan, kebutuhan, selera, dan kesenangan mereka. Jalan untuk memperluas jaringan sangatlah dan sederhana. Satu orang diperkenalkan kepada seseorang lain dan kepada seseorang yang lain lagi.

Orang Amerika itu penuh curiga pada bom atom atau bom hidrogen mereka sendiri, tidak percaya pada diri mereka sendiri, dan orang Rusia juga sama-sama saling tidak percaya antara mereka, orang Asia tidak percaya pada orang Barat, dan Barat takut dan tidak percaya pada Asia. Rasialisme di Afrika Selatan, politik kulit putih Australia, curiga bangsa asing di Indonesia dan negara-negara Asia lain, diskriminasi Negro di Amerika, ini semuanya berdasar pada tidak percaya. Karena manusia tidak percaya pada manusia, tidak percaya bahwa manusia sama manusia bisa dan harus sama-sama hidup. Si komunis begitu, si demokrat begitu, si imperialis begitu, si merdeka begitu. Semuanya sama saja.

The first ring glowed in the distance, lit up by consumerism that was brought to Jakarta courtesy of western cultures and Christian nations, and it influenced impoverished Muslims in the third ring, who wore Manchester United tee shirts with 'Rooney' on the back, twisting further the attitudes and perceptions of those who were bent already toward radicalism.

I don’t like it when Christianity and western cultures are used as propaganda to sway impoverished Muslims into becoming self-detonating radicals.

I ranted about the fussiness of Japanese grammar over lunch with Koyama-san, the Jakarta-based Japanese mother of a friend of my older son. ‘Not sure how I’m ever going to manage to learn all those conjugations,’ I groaned. Koyama-san looked at me unblinkingly and replied, ‘I think Pallavi, for you the bigger problem is going to be to learn how to talk softly.

It was radicals like you and your father that hijacked your faith, hijacked a few planes, and made thousands of children orphans in a single day. You pretend my country beats you because you are poor, but you ignore that it was people of your faith that made this war. People like your father made this war. People like your father called for jihad. Well now you got it. You don’t like it? Tell the Imam that his ignorance made his people poor. You don’t understand Americans at all. We don’t beat you because you’re poor. You pissed us off. We’d beat your ass rich or poor.

This is a time of transition and we have to struggle for the changes we want to see. We move forward step by step, we can’t expect the world to turn over as easily as we turn the palm of our hands.

Aku melanjutkan sekolah, masuk kuliah, dan diburu-buru selesai; lalu setelahnya, diburu-buru kerja. Setelah masuk kerja, merasa tersesat karena ini bukan pekerjaan yang kuinginkan. Tapi, kalau aku mau berhenti sebentar untuk memikirkan apa yang kuinginkan, orang-orang akan berlari melewatiku dan bersikap meremehkan. Ngga menyadari bahwa mereka hanya anggota dari kelompok orang-orang yang ngga berpikir.

Aside from my cockeyed internal compass, I also have a shortage of personal coolness, which can be a liability in travel. I have never learned how to arrange my face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know - that super-relaxed, totally-in-charge expression which makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of riot in Jakarta.

The State Department received detailed reports of the extent and nature of the Army operations as killings began in Java. A “Moslem Youth Leader” reported that “assistants” were accompanying troops on sweeps that led to killings.

Italian Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti, whose party remained popular for decades, said that the United States was a nation led by ignorant “slaveholders” who now wanted to buy entire nations just as they had bought human beings.

The sun appeared between the twin spires of the cathedral as its light reflected off the crescent and star that rose out of the dome on top of the mosque. It was beautiful, and surreal. In one instant, the bells rang out from the cathedral and if I closed my eyes then I could easily imagine that I was back home in Europe, but in the next, the call to morning prayer sounded from the mosque, and it was a stark reminder of how far away I actually was from my true home.

If everyone has a vested interest in believing that they understand everything, or even that people are capable in principle of understanding it (either because believing this dampens their insecurities about the unpredictable world, or makes them feel more intelligent than others, or both) then you have an environment in which dopey, reductionist, simple-minded, pat, glib thinking can circulate, like wheelbarrows filled with inflated currency in the marketplaces of Jakarta.

I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder—alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware—is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all. And so what was a more interior, intimate effort on my part, to understand this struggle and to find my place in it, has converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged, one that will shape our lives and the lives of our children for many years to come. The

I guess it's funny -- well maybe 'funny' isn't the word -- but we know who is responsible for the violence that destroyed this place. We know it was the United States that was behind it. But we keep sending our kids there, because they have nowhere else to go.

The only thing I knew for sure is I hadn’t slept in ten years. Not really. I’d been fighting my own monster since nine months after 9/11. I had regrets. I had pain that I still can’t find words to describe. But sooner or later you have to make a choice. Maybe fate or luck or God had a plan for me in Jakarta that was greater than an educational leadership conference, a few papers and a book deal. If Vietnam was for Dad, then maybe Jakarta was for me. Indira says I shouldn’t discount that it was Allah’s plan. The way I see it, Allah’s plan is what started my war.

As every American boy and girl learns, there was a strong element of religious fanaticism involved in the founding of the United States. The Puritans, a group of committed English Christians, did not travel across the Atlantic to make money for England. They sought a place for a purer, more disciplined version of the Calvinist society they wanted to build. One way to put this is that they wanted religious freedom. Another is that they wanted a society that was even more homogeneous, fundamentalist, and theocratic than the one that existed in seventeenth-century Europe.1

Internally, when anticommunism is the ruling ideology, almost the national religion, any legitimate complaint from below can easily be dismissed as communist. Anything that would be an obvious inconvenience to the small clique of rich families that run the country can be easily categorized as dangerous revolution, and cast aside. This includes any whiff of socialism or social democracy, any land reform, and any regulation that would reduce monopoly power and allow for more efficient development and market competition. It includes unions and any normal demands for workers’ rights.

Using numbers compiled by the US-funded Freedom House organization, historian John Coatsworth concluded that from 1960 to 1990, the number of victims of US-backed violence in Latin America "vastly exceeded" the number of people killed in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc over the same period of time.

I said, “Je parle français.” Indira gave me a weird look. Or a look that said I was weird. Whichever. The point is, I don’t really speak French, but it’s a useful phrase for confusing people you don’t wish to speak with. However, it’s apparently more useful in Europe, where no one enjoys speaking to the French.

The specific kind of anticommunism that took shape in these years was partly based on value judgments: the widespread belief in the United States that communism was simply a bad system, or morally repugnant even when effective. But it was also based on a number of assertions about the nature of Soviet-led international communism.

Today I: smoke/am overweight/have a shitty attitude/am depressed because: my mom died of cancer/my uncle put his thumb up my butt/my dad hit me with a razor strop” seems kind of overly deterministic to Randy; it seems to reflect a kind of lazy or half-witted surrender to bald teleology. Basically, if everyone has a vested interest in believing that they understand everything, or even that people are capable in principle of understanding it (either because believing this dampens their insecurities about the unpredictable world, or makes them feel more intelligent than others, or both) then you have an environment in which dopey, reductionist, simple-minded, pat, glib-thinking can circulate, like wheelbarrows filled with inflated currency in the marketplaces of Jakarta.

It was only a couple of chickens. Real chickens. The kind that walk around clucking and pecking. Which is what they were doing. Only no one else seemed to care, or even notice. This is normal? Obviously I had a little hiccup reading my notecards. Understandable. I was talking to forty orphans who had to share a dirt floor with two chickens. No one in college had ever prepared me for this scenario.

Dan, jujur saja, hidup sendirian membuatku semakin sinting—bicara pada diri sendiri, membaca buku keras-keras di dalam kamar mandi, dan memutar film tanpa menontonnya hanya agar ruangan nggak terasa terlalu sunyi. Aku sudah sampai pada titik di mana aku bosan mendengar suara sendiri. Kalau ada stalker yang ingin bicara kepadaku, aku siap menerimanya, asal dia mengeluarkan suara yang berbeda dariku.

Washington shares guilt for every death. The United States was part and parcel of the operation at every stage, starting well before the killing started, until the last body dropped and the last political prisoner emerged from jail, decades later, tortured, scarred, and bewildered. At several points that we know of--and perhaps some we don't--Washington was the prime mover, and provided crucial pressure for the operation to move forward or expand.

SUNYI menjelang tengah malam sehabis gerimis perempuan itu menelusuri lorong sunyi angin malam menemaninya di jalanan basah menyibak nakal rambutnya yang panjang menebar rasa dingin di sekujur tubuhnya ah, hanya angin yang menemani sunyinya ada warna-warni lampu jalan ada dentuman suara musik terdengar ada gelak tawa orang di pinggir jalan ada kepulan asap rokok menghangatkan malam tetapi dia dipeluk dan diperkosa sunyi tak kuasa meronta melepaskan diri tak ada yang tahu suara hatinya batinnya menangis! hidup ini tidak adil! kebenaran dibungkam! kezaliman meraja-lela! orang munafik bebas tertawa! apakah dewi keadilan berselingkuh dengan bandit jalanan? apakah dewi cinta berselingkuh dengan penjahat malam? jangan-jangan kebenaran itu hanya impian keadilan itu hanya utopia cinta hanya khayalan dengan mata terpejam dia bertanya mengapa keadilan selalu ada di jalan sunyi? (jakarta – 19/12/2015)

An International People's Tribunal assembled later in the Netherlands found the Indonesian military guilty of a number of crimes against humanity, including torture, unjustified and long-term detainment in cruel conditions, forced labour amounting to enslavement, and systemic sexual violence. The judges found that all this was carried out for political purposes--to destroy the Communist Party and then "prop up a violent, dictatorial regime"--with the assistance of the United States, the UK, and Australia.

But we know that whatever it was, Washington did not stop helping to carry out Operation Annihilation. The US economic elite heard a very different message. Indonesia was open for business. In 1967, the first year of Suharto’s fully consolidated rule, General Electric, American Express, Caterpillar, and Goodyear Tire all came to explore the new opportunities available to them in Indonesia. Star-Kist foods arrived to see about fishing in Indonesian waters, and of course, defense contractors Raytheon and Lockheed popped over, too.

When it comes to pure economics, there’s increasingly robust agreement that the developing nations lost their chances to “catch up” economically with the First World around the early 1980s, when an explosion of debt, a turn to neoliberal structural adjustment, and “globalization” put them on their current path.8 Within the current structure, the only real examples of large Third World countries becoming as rich as those in the First World since 1945 are South Korea and Taiwan, and it’s very clear that these nations were given special exemptions from the rules of the world order because of their strategic importance in the Cold War.9

The Belt and Road is global in nature. Its ruling principle is interdependence, a close network of common interests by which every country’s development is affected by the development path in other countries. In his Jakarta speech, Xi called it a “community of shared destiny.” The expression featured in Chinese official pronouncements since at least 2007, when it was used to describe relations between Taiwan and the Mainland. Applied to relations outside China’s borders, it was a reformulation—a modern version—of the traditional concept of Tianxia (天下), which scholars such as Zhao Tingyang had been popularizing with extraordinary success. Zhao argued that the most important fact about the world today is that it has not become a zone of political unity, but remains a Hobbesian stage of chaos, conflict, noncooperation and anarchy.16 Looking for a way to frame new political concepts distinct from Western ideas of world order, the Chinese authorities quickly appropriated Tianxia—a notion that originated about three thousand years ago—and made it the cornerstone of their most ambitious geopolitical initiative. The idea of a community of shared destiny and the Belt and Road develop the two sides of every human action. Both have their own emphasis: the former belongs to the idea, the concept or type, the latter is aimed at practice. Together they form the “dialectical unity of theory and practice, goals and paths, value rationality and instrumental rationality.”17

Working with CIA analysts, embassy political officer Robert Martens prepared lists with the names of thousands of communists and suspected communists, and handed them over to the Army, so that these people could be murdered and "checked off" the list. As far as we know, this was at least the third time in history that US officials had supplied lists of communists and alleged communists to allies, so that they could round them up and kill them. The first was in Guatemala in 1954, the second was in Iraq in 1963, and now, on a much larger scale, was Indonesia 1965. 'It really was a big help to the army,' said Martens, who was a member of the US embassy's political section. 'I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad.

Why did Cold War Washington let Western Europe “get away” with all this light socialism when similar policy orientations led to violent intervention in the Third World? Was it only that, as Francisca said, Americans simply trusted their European cousins—who were white, and therefore responsible—to handle the task of managing democracy? A complementary explanation might be that these countries, some still overseeing remnants of colonial empire, were incredibly rich and powerful. They were much harder to push around, even if Washington had wanted to, and—perhaps more importantly—they sat at the top of the world economy. They were being fully integrated into the US-led system, and so there was much less of a risk they would try to radically reshape the global order, because it had served them quite well.

In the same years that Benny was in Kansas, life for Indonesians of Chinese descent like him got increasingly difficult back home. They had long suffered from intermittent explosions of racism, but as lines in the sand were drawn and redrawn under Sukarno’s Guided Democracy, there seemed to be less and less space for them. The first major blow was a 1959 law, passed just as Benny was heading to Kansas, that took some economic rights away from foreign nationals. In practice, this included the country’s large ethnic Chinese population. It was not Sukarno who pushed for this—it was the military—but he let the racist law, a deviation from Indonesia’s foundational values, pass. The Army also organized violent anti-Chinese riots—for which it did not seek Sukarno’s approval. The military used US funds to plot these pogroms.1 The situation was terrifying

And then there was the "Third World"—everyone else, the vast majority of the world's population. That term was coined in the early 1950s, and originally, all of its connotations were positive. When the leaders of these new nation-states took up the term, they spoke it with pride; it contained a dream of a better future in which the world's downtrodden and enslaved masses would take control of their own destiny. The term was used in the sense of the "Third Estate" during the French Revolution, the revolutionary common people who would overthrow the First and Second Estates of the monarchy and the clergy. "Third" did not mean third-rate, but something more like the third and final act: the first group of rich white countries had their crack at creating the world, as did the second, and this was the new movement, full of energy and potential, just waiting to be unleashed. For much of the planet, the Third World was not just a category; it was a movement.

What a joy this book is! I love recipe books, but it’s short-lived; I enjoy the pictures for several minutes, read a few pages, and then my eyes glaze over. They are basically books to be used in the kitchen for one recipe at a time. This book, however, is in a different class altogether and designed to be read in its entirety. It’s in its own sui generis category; it has recipes at the end of most of the twenty-one chapters, but it’s a book to be read from cover to cover, yet it could easily be read chapter by chapter, in any order, as they are all self-contained. Every bite-sized chapter is a flowing narrative from a well-stocked brain encompassing Balinese culture, geography and history, while not losing its main focus: food. As you would expect from a scholar with a PhD in history from Columbia University, the subject matter has been meticulously researched, not from books and articles and other people’s work, but from actually being on the ground and in the markets and in the kitchens of Balinese families, where the Balinese themselves learn their culinary skills, hands on, passed down orally, manually and practically from generation to generation. Vivienne Kruger has lived in Bali long enough to get it right. That’s no mean feat, as the subject has not been fully studied before. Yes, there are so-called Balinese recipe books, most, if I’m not mistaken, written by foreigners, and heavily adapted. The dishes have not, until now, been systematically placed in their proper cultural context, which is extremely important for the Balinese, nor has there been any examination of the numerous varieties of each type of recipe, nor have they been given their true Balinese names. This groundbreaking book is a pleasure to read, not just for its fascinating content, which I learnt a lot from, but for the exuberance, enthusiasm and originality of the language. There’s not a dull sentence in the book. You just can’t wait to read the next phrase. There are eye-opening and jaw-dropping passages for the general reader as Kruger describes delicacies from the village of Tengkudak in Tabanan district — grasshoppers, dragonflies, eels and live baby bees — and explains how they are caught and cooked. She does not shy away from controversial subjects, such as eating dog and turtle. Parts of it are not for the faint-hearted, but other parts make you want to go out and join the participants, such as the Nusa Lembongan fishermen, who sail their outriggers at 5.30 a.m. The author quotes Miguel Covarrubias, the great Mexican observer of the 1930s, who wrote “The Island of Bali.” It has inspired all writers since, including myself and my co-author, Ni Wayan Murni, in our book “Secrets of Bali, Fresh Light on the Morning of the World.” There is, however, no bibliography, which I found strange at first. I can only imagine it’s a reflection of how original the subject matter is; there simply are no other sources. Throughout the book Kruger mentions Balinese and Indonesian words and sometimes discusses their derivations. It’s a Herculean task. I was intrigued to read that “satay” comes from the Tamil word for flesh ( sathai ) and that South Indians brought satay to Southeast Asia before Indonesia developed its own tradition. The book is full of interesting tidbits like this. The book contains 47 recipes in all, 11 of which came from Murni’s own restaurant, Murni’s Warung, in Ubud. Mr Dolphin of Warung Dolphin in Lovina also contributed a number of recipes. Kruger adds an introduction to each recipe, with a detailed and usually very personal commentary. I think my favorite, though, is from a village priest (pemangku), I Made Arnila of the Ganesha (Siwa) Temple in Lovina. water. I am sure most will enjoy this book enormously; I certainly did.” Review published in The Jakarta Globe, April 17, 2014. Jonathan Copeland is an author and photographer based in Bali. thejakartaglobe/features/spiritual-journey-culinary-world-bali

Jones, along with the US military attaché in Indonesia, took Subandrio’s advice. He emphasized to Washington that the United States should support the Indonesian military as a more effective, long-term anticommunist strategy. The country of Indonesia couldn’t be simply broken into pieces to slow down the advance of global socialism, so this was a way that the US could work within existing conditions. This strategic shift would begin soon, and would prove very fruitful. But behind the scenes, the CIA boys dreamed up wild schemes. On the softer side, a CIA front called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which funded literary magazines and fine arts around the world, published and distributed books in Indonesia, such as George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the famous anticommunist collection The God That Failed.33 And the CIA discussed simply murdering Sukarno. The Agency went so far as to identify the “asset” who would kill him, according to Richard M. Bissell, Wisner’s successor as deputy director for plans.34 Instead, the CIA hired pornographic actors, including a very rough Sukarno look-alike, and produced an adult film in a bizarre attempt to destroy his reputation. The Agency boys knew that Sukarno routinely engaged in extramarital affairs. But everyone in Indonesia also knew it. Indonesian elites didn’t shy away from Sukarno’s activities the way the Washington press corps protected philanderers like JFK. Some of Sukarno’s supporters viewed his promiscuity as a sign of his power and masculinity. Others, like Sumiyati and members of the Gerwani Women’s Movement, viewed it as an embarrassing defect. But the CIA thought this was their big chance to expose him. So they got a Hollywood film crew together.35 They wanted to spread the rumor that Sukarno had slept with a beautiful blond flight attendant who worked for the KGB, and was therefore both immoral and compromised. To play the president, the filmmakers (that is, Bing Crosby and his brother Larry) hired a “Hispanic-looking” actor, and put him in heavy makeup to make him look a little more Indonesian. They also wanted him bald, since exposing Sukarno—who always wore a hat—as such might further embarrass him. The idea was to destroy the genuine affection that young Sakono, and Francisca, and millions of other Indonesians, felt for the Founding Father of their country. The thing was never released—not because this was immoral or a bad idea, but because the team couldn’t put together a convincing enough film.36

Moscow. Brasilia. Auckland. Oslo. Sofia. Stockholm. Reykjavik. Jakarta. New Delhi. Certain more militant and paranoid territories had correctly initiated immediate airport quarantines, cordoning off the dead jets with military force, and yet… Setrakian couldn’t help but suspect that these landings were as much a tactical distraction as an attempt at infection. Only time would tell if he was correct—though, in truth, there was precious little time.

Ini Kisah Tawuran Pelajar di jalanan Ibu Kota, 5 Sahabat terjebak solidaritas Persaudaraan & Reputasi sbg terkuat, sekolah raja tawuran!

I’d see the arrow. I’d think about attitude and perception. Maybe the green arrow on the ceiling is to Muslims as the KJV in the Motel 6 nightstand is to Christians.

The night skyline was stunning. I could see the Monas and Istiqlal Mosque bathed in brilliant white lights and a dozen other places of cultural and historical significance. It’s an amazing, beautiful world we live in … despite Uncle Google’s abysmal view of American schools, the security checkpoints and vehicle inspections that seem to be everywhere, and the need to be vigilant because of the things we do to each other.

Matahari tua, Hai selamat malam wahai sang surya yang sedang di lahap oleh gemerlap bintang Ku rindu kemilau jinggamu yang selalu menyipitkan mataku namun sangat sedap dinikmati dengan mata telanjang Ku rindu saat jinggamu tersungkur tergantikan oleh awan kelabu Saat itu juga... Ku rindu bercengkarama dengan asap Ibu Kota menaiki kuda mesin dan menikmati sepotong senja yang telah hilang bersamamu. Sampaikan rinduku padanya wahai senja abadi.

Sewa elf Jakarta tetap siap jadi partner transportasi yang baik untuk kepentingan wisata serta acara keluarga anda. Kami memberi semua service alat transportasi keperluan anda dengan memerhatikan tiap-tiap armada transportasi yang telah mempunyai sertifikasi wajar jalan.

In Taiwan as in Shanghai, as well as in Rio, Moscow, Jakarta, and Beirut, the same global gay icons appear in gay-friendly cafés and bookstores and on the walls of LGBT organizations. On five continents, I see Harvey Milk, Lady Gaga, Elton John, Ricky Martin, and, of course, the two Brokeback Mountain cowboys everywhere. There’s even a Brokeback Mountain Café in the gay Chapinero neighborhood of Bogotá.