“It was in Buru that Pramoedya created “the Quartet”. Initially forbidden access to writing materials, Pramoedya recited the stories; vivid tales of the creation of Indonesia, a time of national awakening and rebellion against the colonial rulers, orally to other prisoners. When Pramoedya and two of his fellow prisoners, Joesoef Isak and Hasyim Rachman, were […]
Food story: “Borek in Melbourne and the Indonesia factor.”
Eating as a source of pleasure obviously has a long history. No doubt there is a physiologically based link between that pleasure, registered primarily in the mouth, nostrils and stomach, and the urge to eat to sustain ourselves. The pleasure can be very private, as when we indulge secretly in a favourite chocolate or a […]
Dari ORDER BARU ke gelombang demonstrasi mahasiswa September 2019.
Dari Orde Baru ke gelombang demonstrasi mahasiswa September, 2019. Sejak kolonialis militer dan birokrasi Belanda dipaksa meninggalkan negeri baru Indonesia tahun 1950, Indonesia hanya pernah mengalami SATU budaya politik dan politik ekonomi yang sungguh-singguh terkonsolidasikan: ORDE BARU. HANYA SATU dan itu adalah sebuah kediktatoran totalitarian kapitalisme kroni. HANYA SATU!! 1946-65 tak ada sistem ataupun budaya […]
Everything You Always Wanted to Happen in the Bumi Manusia Film
Everything You Always Wanted to Happen in the Bumi Manusia Film* (*but Were Afraid to Ask) BY : MIKAEL JOHANI AUGUST 09, 2019, JAKARTA GLOBE The wait is, finally, almost over. The film adaptation of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s classic novel “Bumi Manusia,” or This Earth of Mankind, gets its red carpet première in Surabaya today. The choice […]
Aussie Sketch: Smokey Chilli Politics by Max Lane
It was a big room, as hotel rooms go. That hotel was famous for its large rooms. Big beds also. It was in the centre of Jakarta. On the roof was a very big swimming pool. But no garden surrounds, just concrete. Good for swimmers, but not for those who wanted to muck around in […]
Humiliated Australian imperialism lashes out: lawyer and intelligence agent with consciences threatened with gaol. by Max Lane
The laying of criminal charges under the Intelligence Services Act 2001 against Witness K and lawyer Bernard Collaery in relation to their exposure of the Australian government’s reprehensible bugging of the East Timorese government’s cabinet room is a case of a defeated and wounded elitist white imperialism lashing out at somebody at home because they […]
AUSSIE SKETCHES FROM NUSANTARA 2: Oyster Omelettes, Hitchhiking, and Pots and Pans
I hitch-hiked from Johor Bahru to Kuala Lumpur in Malayisa, and then on to Ipoh, in 1970. This though wasn’t my first venture into hitch-hiking. I started hitch-hiking when I was in high-school. I was a young boy living in the western suburbs of Sydney who read adventure stories, the best of which were, of […]
Aussie sketches from Nusantara 1: Hamburgers, babi guling, and a map of Bali. by Max Lane
It was a map of Bali. It was one of those cheap topographic maps, made primarily for ornamentation rather than as an actual map. It was hung on the wall. I could see Denpasar, Bali’s capital, and the great volcano, Mount Agung that had erupted seven years before in 1962. Other mountains, rivers, lakes and […]
From afar: ideological offensive in the US – liberalism, imperialism
In my June 20 post on the escalation of ideological warfare in the United States, I argued that the propaganda offensive by the Trump alliance in defense of their policy of separation of children from parents crossing into the US without documents was aimed at achieving a “we win, you lose” outcome: a decisive victory. […]
Reflections from afar on the escalation of ideological warfare in the United States. by Max Lane.
The United States, under Trump and likely for the foreseeable future, is on a dominate-the-world-totally (and space) trajectory. This is a consequence of the economic situation where imperialism (as the highest stage of capitalism) is now confronted with intensifying contradictions, whose symptoms are the various crisis on the imperial periphery of Southern Europe and the […]
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