With the passing of the anti-worker Omnibus Law, President Jokowi’s administration follows the path of Indonesia’s dark past.
Geography Archives: Indonesia
Neoliberal ‘Omnibus Law’ sparks rebellion in Indonesia
A major protest movement is underway in Indonesia against the neoliberal, authoritarian-populist regime of Joko Widodo and his collaborators in the House of Representatives. Frans Ari Prasetyo explains the so-called ‘Omnibus Law’ that sparked the protest, and reports on the clashes now unfolding in Bandung and many other cities.
Kill the Bill, or it will kill us all
Indonesia’s trade unions and social movements are taking to the streets against anti-worker legislation.
Protests rage in Indonesia against anti-worker “omnibus law”, hundreds arrested
An alliance of trade unions, environmental groups and students’ movements have launched an indefinite protest across against the sweeping changes to labor and environmental laws.
National strike: Indonesia rises up against new anti-worker law
Hundreds of thousands of workers and students in Indonesia have taken to the streets in a powerful wave of strikes and demonstrations opposing the enactment of a new set of laws that would dramatically weaken the rights of the working class and environmental protections.
Green structural adjustment in the World Bank’s resilient cities
Cities across the world are facing a double-barreled existential problem: how to adapt to climate change and how to pay for it.
Climate emergency: Indonesia faces catastrophic floods, disappearing islands
While the stark reality of the global climate emergency struck home in Australia with its worst bushfire season, its neighbour Indonesia faced catastrophic floods and islands disappearing below the rising sea. Green Left’s Peter Boyle interviewed Yuyun Harmono, the climate change campaigner of Friends of the Earth Indonesia (Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia – WAHLI).
AGO proposes nationwide raids on books containing ’banned ideas’
Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo is proposing that massive raids be carried out to hunt down books which contain communist teachings and banned ideologies. The proposal was made after the seizure of hundreds of books around the country allegedly containing “banned ideas”. — Taufiq Siddiq, Jakarta “I’m proposing that if possible, yes massive raids be carried […]
Filming in the most depressing city on the Earth: Jakarta
It stinks, it is the most polluted city on earth, but that is not the most terrible thing about it.
There’s now proof that Soeharto orchestrated the 1965 killings
As Indonesia commemorates 20 years since the fall of the New Order military dictatorship, the foundation myth of the regime (and, indeed, the post-New Order state as well) remains stubbornly in place.
There is a structural crisis of capitalism
In this in-depth interview conducted in Dakar, Samir Amin speaks on a wide range of topics: globalisation; generalised monopoly capital; the alarming growth of inequality; the role of the state in the neoliberal era; globalisation and delinking; capitalism and modernity; the return of fascism in the contemporary capitalist world, and more.
No, U.S. didn’t ‘stand by’ Indonesian genocide – it actively participated
“Standing by,” however, is not what the United States did during the Indonesian genocide of 1965–66; rather, it actively supported the massacres, which were applauded at the time by the New York Times.
Kendeng Against Cement
Since March 13, 2017, over 50 local indigenous peasants known as Sedulur Kendeng, from Central Java, Indonesia, have been sitting with their feet in cement boxes in protest before the Presidential Palace. This is their second such protest in eleven months.
Cementing Dissent in Indonesia
The accelerating rate of land and resource dispossession in post-authoritarian Indonesia has led to a number of confrontations between state and corporate authorities on one side and peasant communities on the other. Many of these conflicts, though garnering much attention from sympathetic activists, remain localised. However, there are moments when peasants and their activist allies […]
Job Loss, the Clintons, NAFTA, and a New Progressive Labor Rights Agenda
Today’s post discusses the way that neoliberal policies embraced by the Democratic Party resulted in job loss in key states. Bear with me: there are facts and figures here that make the case. Tomorrow, I will continue to discuss these issues in the context of “domestic” job displacement. The third post will discuss a progressive […]
Spanish Recollections: the 80th Anniversary of the International Brigades
In one hurrying day, eighty years ago, in Albacete, a center of Spain’s La Mancha region, a few officers somehow created quarters for five hundred men arriving the following day, then five hundred more, and more. Soon three or four thousand, somehow organized in units despite a mad variety of languages, were issued a motley […]
A History of a Counter-Revolution
Gerald Horne. The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. NYU Press, 2014. In the conventional, celebratory liberal historical narrative about the Founding Fathers, the post-revolutionary persistence of slavery in the United States, along with women’s lack of essential political and legal rights, has long been regarded as […]
Europe Between the Pit and the Pendulum
If you have ever read Edgar Allen Poe‘s gruesome stories you may recall feelings of horror like those which made me, still a youngster, cringe and shudder. I have similar feelings when I hear of bloodthirsty, barely-hidden “concerts” by German Neo-Nazis, which too often lead to violence against subjects of their hatred: hippy-type leftist youngsters […]
Losing Heads and Sending Arms
Two famous heads got lost in Berlin. Neither loss, I hasten to add, was connected with brutality. From the past or near future, they caused melancholy or rejoicing, depending on your viewpoint. One loss really occurred twenty-two years ago, when the 62-foot red granite statue of Lenin on East Berlin’s Lenin Square and Lenin Allee […]
Who Really Benefits From Sweatshops?
Consumers are ultimately the ones responsible for dangerous conditions in garment assembly plants in the Global South, Hong Kong-based business executive Bruce Rockowitz told the New York Times recently. The problem is that improved safety would raise the price of clothing, according to Rockowitz, who heads Li & Fung Limited, a sourcing company that hooks […]
