Jim Percy, 1948-1992 

Jim Percy, 1948-1992 

Jim Percy, national president of the Democratic Socialist Party, died quietly as a result of cancer, at his home in Sydney on October 12. He was 43 years old and had devoted 27 years of his life to revolutionary socialist politics.

Like so many of his generation, Jim came into radical politics through the struggle against the imperialist war in Vietnam. In 1965, as a 17-year-old secondary student in Sydney he joined the Vietnam Action Campaign and went on to play a major role in building the mass movement against Washington’s aggression. In 1970-71 he was one of the coordinators of the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign.  Continue reading “Jim Percy, 1948-1992 “

Kedaulatan ekonomi, radikalisme, terorisme, Pancasila, toleransi, dan populisme Islam: Wawancara dengan Max Lane oleh PUSAT KAJIAN SENI DAN BUDAYA KONTEMPORER

“Beragam isu berkembang melalui media-media nasional Indonesia, di tahun-tahun politik yang panas. Mulai kedaulatan ekonomi, radikalisme, terorisme, Pancasila, toleransi, dan populisme Islam. Seolah Indonesia diguncang dalam kondisi gawat. Benarkah begitu? Bagaimanakah sebenarnya keadaan Indonesia saat ini, terutama politik dan budayanya?

Simak wawancara kami dengan Max Lane, seorang aktivis dan pengamat Indonesia dari Australia, penulis buku serta penerjemah buku-buku Pramoedya Ananta Toer.” BRIKOLASE.COM

Wawancara oleh Yongki Gigih Prasisko.

Baca DISINI selengkapnya

Max Lane: Why is Indonesia afraid to teach Pramodeya in school?

Reza Gunadha – Many academics, intellectuals and Indonesian youth can speak fluently on the historical ideas of ancient Greece and modern Europe.

But when speaking about the history of their own nation, they are unsure and hesitant or just parrot historical texts or mainstream literature and thus fail to understand the history of their own country.

At least that is the criticism put forward by Max Lane, an Indonesianist from Australia and the first person to translate Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Buru Quartet into English.

………

Suara.com journalists Abdus Soemadh from the Central Java city of Yogyakarta had an opportunity to conduct a special interview with Max Lane last week.

For full interview in English read HERE.

 

Trade Unions’ Initiative To Create Alternative Political Force in  Indonesia. by Max Lane

Trade Unions’ Initiative To Create Alternative Political Force in
Indonesia.

by Max Lane

“Five trade union confederations organised a conference in April 2018 that brought together like-minded progressive trade unions, non-government organisations, student activists and political groups, to push for an alternative political force which would be independent of the two major power blocs led by President Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto. ”

For full article read here in ISEAS Perspective.

 

Deklarasi-Konferensi-Gerakan-Rakyat
Joint Declaration of Conference Manifesto.

 

1965 – A Crime of Anticommunism by Max Lane

A new book proves that the Indonesian army was responsible for the systematic slaughter of leftists in the 1965–66 genocide — and that orders came directly from the top.

Jess Melvin’s new book, The Army and the Indonesian Genocide, has been rightly hailed as a breakthrough. Uncovering the actors behind the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Indonesian leftists (as well as the country’s Chinese racial minority), Melvin punctures a hole in the prevailing story about the 1965–66 genocide.

For full article read here at JACOBIN.

Jess

 

ARTICLE (re-post): WHY YOU SHOULD READ INDONESIA’S “THIS EARTH OF MANKIND” by Max Lane

“In January 2014 Joshua Oppenheimer’s film on Indonesia, The Act of Killing, was nominated for an academy award, reflecting its penetration into mainstream film watching. Many people will be introduced to Indonesia by this vivid study of the country’s ruling lumpen elite. Another, very different, introduction to Indonesia might be reading Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s historical novel Bumi Manusia (This Earth of Mankind).

The English language edition of This Earth of Mankind was published by Penguin in 1983. The sequels to this novel, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass, were published over the following several years by Penguin in Australia and the United Kingdom. They were launched into the United States by William Morrow, Hyperion and Penguin in the 1990s. As their translator, I am very pleased to see that they are still in print 30 years later, having had many reprints. The four novels are likely to appear soon as eBooks, Penguin USA having bought the eBook rights. They appear already to be advertised as eBooks for Kindle on Amazon.com.

teom1

Pramoedya’s work has, on the whole, met with critical acclaim in the West, in particular the United States. The publication of other translations followed, such as Silent Songs of a Mute,Fugitive, Girl from the Coast and collections of short stories. In 1992 the New York Times reviewer wrote:

Now comes a book of far greater scope and depth from independent Indonesia’s greatest but still most controversial fiction writer, whose career spans more than 40 years. “This Earth of Mankind,” the first in a cycle of four novels, is the tale of a bittersweet coming of age in Java, Indonesia’s dominant island, almost a century ago. Through it, we are taken back to the days of nascent Indonesian nationalism. But the author is a humanist, not a propagandist, and so his novel is also a wonderful example of the best storytelling tradition of his country.[1]

In 1996, after House of Glass appeared, the Washington Post reviewer wrote:

The Buru Tetralogy is one of the 20th century’s great artistic creations, a work of the richest variety, color, size and import, founded on a profound belief in mankind’s potential for greatness and shaped by a huge compassion for mankind’s weakness.[2]

Jamie James in his article “The Indonesiad” in The New Yorker wrote:

Pramoedya’s masterwork is the Buru Quartet, a cycle of novels set in the final, decadent years of Dutch colonialism in Java. The series follows the life of a revolutionary journalist named Minke. The first native Javanese boy to attend the elite Dutch colonial high school, Minke is full of idealistic notions about European progress. The process of his disillusionment and forging of his Indonesian identity – a new element in the periodic table of history – [forms] the novels’ core. The Buru Quartet is saturated with the gothic gloom and steamy atmosphere of the rain forest. With the publication this month, by William Morrow, of the quartet’s final volume, “House of Glass,” and the paperback reissue, by Penguin, of its predecessors, “This Earth of Mankind,” “Child of All Nations,” and “Footsteps,” American readers can now follow Pramoedya’s saga of Minke – one of the most ambitious undertakings in postwar world literature – from beginning to end.[3]

Continue reading “ARTICLE (re-post): WHY YOU SHOULD READ INDONESIA’S “THIS EARTH OF MANKIND” by Max Lane”