Thursday, December 14, 2017

ANDRE VLTCHEK - Capitalism reduced Indonesian cities to infested carcases

Andre Vltchek describes how the 1965 military/ Islamic coup in Indonesia wiped all traces of socialism replacing it instead with Western backed unbridled capitalism which has led to massive exploitation of the Indonesian people and their land. This once very beautiful country is now reduced to endless open mines, open sewers, masssive poverty, enormous pollution, where the extractive industries are run by local crooks and the Western elite. The Western media paints Indonesia as a thriving capitalist economy generating enormous profits and yet most Indonesians live in absolute squalor. 

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) won the election for Governor of Jakarta and he tried to improve the city for ordinary people but the ruling elite eventually put him in prison.  

The US ruling elite are now turning parts of America into a wasteland as well. People think of capitalism as mom-and-pop small business turning into larger businesses which helps regenerate communities, creating jobs, and where hard work is rewarded and towns become nice places to live, but social democracy, or even socialism, (as well as MMT) is much more likely to create this ideal world.   

 Several years ago, a prominent Indonesian businessman who now resides in Canada, insisted on meeting me in a back room of one of Jakarta’s posh restaurants. An avid reader of mine, he ‘had something urgent to tell me’, after finding out that our paths were going to be crossing in this destroyed and hopelessly polluted Indonesian capital.


What he had to say was actually straight to the point and definitely worth sitting two hours in an epic traffic jam:
“No one will be allowed to build comprehensive public transportation in Jakarta or in any other Indonesian city. If a mayor or a governor tries and defies the wishes of the ruthless business community which is in fact controlling most of the Indonesian government, he or she will be dethroned, or even totally destroyed.”
These ‘prophetic’ words are still ringing in my ears, several months after the complete destruction of the progressive Jakarta governor, known as Ahok (real name: Basuki Tjahaja Purnama), who tried very hard to improve the seemingly ungovernable and thoroughly destroyed city, constructing new mass transit lines (LRT), restoring old train stations, cleaning canals, attempting to build at least some basic net of sidewalks, as well as planting trees and creating parks.
After Ahok’s first and extremely successful term in office, the opposition consolidated its forces. It consisted mainly of the Islamists, big business tycoons, and the military as well as other revanchist cadres (almost exclusively pro-business and pro-Western individuals) that are still controlling Indonesia.
‘Ahok’, an outsider and an ethnic Chinese, patently lost.
Instead of coming to his rescue, several ‘prominent’ but corrupt city planners and architects, most of them enjoying funding from abroad, shamelessly joined the bandwagon of ‘Ahok bashing’.
But even defeating Ahok was not enough. He had to be punished and humiliated, in order to discourage others from trying to replicate his socially-oriented example. Already during the election campaign, charges were brought against him, alleging that he had ‘insulted Islam’ during one of his public appearances. It was total nonsense, disputed by several leading Indonesian linguists, but in a thoroughly corrupt society (both legally and morally) it simply worked.
On May 9, 2017, ‘Ahok’ was sentenced to two years in prison, and unceremoniously thrown into the dungeon.
                                                                        *****
How much deeper can Indonesian cities sink? When are they going to become uninhabitable?
People are already dying; thousands are, unnecessarily – from cancer, from stress, from respiratory diseases.
Millions of human beings are wasting their lives. They are alive, but it is only a bare existence, not really life: they are moving mechanically, cutting through the filthy air on their scooters, eating junk food, constantly surrounded by decay and ugliness.
Why?
For how much longer?
The forests of Borneo, Sumatra and Papua are burning. All over this archipelago, everything is logged out, consumed by mines, ruined by monstrous pollution. The extraction and looting of natural resources is the only real economic ‘engine’ of today’s Indonesia.
The cities are not faring much better. They are actually not faring any better at all.
It is time to wake up, or it could get too late. But the nation appears to be in a total slumber. It does not notice, anymore, that it is really in freefall. It was conditioned not to notice. It was made to accept, even to celebrate its own collapse.
Those who forced Indonesia into all this will not tell. As long as there is at least something left, something that can be extracted, utilized, looted, they will be cheering this great Indonesia’s ‘success’ and ‘progress’.
I encourage all those people from all over the world who would want to see the true face of neo-colonialism, of savage capitalism and right wing disaster, to come to the Indonesian cities! Come and see with your own eyes. Come and take a walk; don’t hide in your comfortable cities full of leafy parks, concert halls, art cinemas, public transportation and theatres.
This is real. This is a warning to the world!
Come and see how cities look like in a country where Communism and socialism are banned, where a colony does not even realize that it being colonized, and where everything is served on huge silver plates straight into the gullet of that monster called fascism.
It found it hard for me to visualize how bad Indonesia was until i saw this film.

                                    The World's Dirtiest River | Unreported World



The World's Dirtiest River: Today we take you to the world’s most polluted river. 35 million people rely on the Citarum river on the island of Java, Indonesia, but it has become a toxic river of waste. Seyi Rhodes went to the island for this Unreported World classic in April 2014


23 comments:

MRW said...

How the hell do you pronounce ANDRE VLTCHEK's name?

Matt Franko said...

“Capitalism reduced Indonesian cities ”

When do you lefties stop blaming figures of speech like this and start looking at real people’s training , competence and qualifications ?

Matt Franko said...

"35 million people rely on the Citarum river on the island of Java, Indonesia, but it has become a toxic river of waste."

The river did this to itself?

How many trained/qualified Environmental Engineers do they have over there?

Noah Way said...

Parts of the US are like that. And not for a shortage of "qualified environmental engineers". Go for a swim, Matt.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/half-all-us-rivers-are-too-polluted-our-health/316027/

https://www.ewg.org/research/dishonorable-discharge/50-most-polluted-rivers-country#.WjPdHes8KrU

Matt Franko said...

https://www.voanews.com/a/water-wheel-picks-up-trash-in-baltimores-waterways/1957539.html

“Chase says the garbage comes from people who throw litter like plastic bottles or Styrofoam plates on the ground, instead of putting it into bins.”

Don’t see “Capitalism!” mentioned by this qualified guy here in this interview...

Matt Franko said...

Do they even have any bins over there in this turd world hell hole that the post reveals?

Maybe start with providing some bins?

MRW said...

Well...I learned how to pronounce it: Va-CHAKE. Drives me nutz to mispresent or mispronounce someone's name.

MRW said...

"Do they even have any bins over there in this turd world hell hole that the post reveals?"

Matt, you ever been to Indonesia?

Kaivey said...

Ahok did try to clean up Jakarta, but the US installed puppet ruling elite threw him in prison.

Kaivey said...

Do you know, MRW, I thought it was an I after the V so I would pronounce it Vitchek, but when I copied and pasted it yesterday it came up as an L and I thought don't look right. Anyway, thanks for finding out how to pronounce it.

Matt Franko said...

Kaivey maybe send them this link:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management

“Waste management or waste disposal are all the activities and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal.[1] This includes amongst other things collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste together with monitoring and regulation. It also encompasses the legal and regulatory framework that relates to waste management encompassing guidance on recycling.”

Might be a good place for them to start learning about it...

Matt Franko said...

Here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitary_engineering

“sanitary engineering is a very interdisciplinary field which may involve such elements as hydraulics, constructive modelling, information technology, project design, microbiology, pathology and the many divisions within environmental science and environmental technology. In some cases, considerations that fall within the field of social sciences and urban planning must be factored in as well.”

Maybe this moron journo who wrote this article is ignorant of this discipline?

Matt Franko said...

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5600.html

$11b trade deficit so far this year... why don’t they use that to buy some bins and some garbage trucks from the US?

I know ... I know .... “neoliberal conspiracy!”....

Unknown said...

Matt,

Let's think about your reasoning. Indonesia's rivers aren't polluted until capitalism is forced on the country at gunpoint. Now an economic system has been instituted in which you say massive cleanup is required to maintain livability. So we impose massive social costs upon the populace, then impose further costs demanding the people clean up the mess while the capitalists keep the profits for themselves.

What you've described is a situation in which "qualified, material systems types" are subsidized by capitalism's dysfunction. In other words the need for them is the product of an irrational system. No capitalism, no need for STEMies to act as managers.

Matt Franko said...

No let’s look at your reasoning, you’re saying that those people, when provided produce in hygienic packaging, will simply discard the packaging right on the ground ....

Or are you saying that only the foreign workers sent in by “capitalists!” are the only ones littering?

How would the indigenous population there receive produce if not in hygienic packaging? Look at the video it is mostly plastic water bottles and beverage cans... should they instead drink fetid water out of rain barrels ? Please...

Nothing is forced on anybody at gunpoint... the litter is comprised of materials used to hygenically package all produce in the contemporary period.... it creates the need for waste management of the packaging materials which if not done can create environmental problems ....

You guys don’t know what you are talking about or how to even begin to remediate the problem so you create figures of speech to blame it on in your disqualified minds...

Matt Franko said...

You say "deficit too small!" and "stability creates instability!" as alleged key technical insights and then when things start to improve and the "deficit!" stays static or even is seen to reduce you then blame any remaining problems on some fantasy "neo-liberal conspiracy!"...

You guys do this ALL THE TIME...

Matt Franko said...

The technical knowledge/skills have to be there whether you guys who are unqualified technically prefer to view the institutional arrangements via one figure of speech or another figure of speech...

Which figure of speech you guys choose to prefer doesnt matter technically...

Simsalablunder said...

Matt is not qualified to discuss these matters since he cannot restrain from ascribing opinions others don't have. It's called attacking a straw man an one of the most elementary argument fallacies there is.

Matt Franko said...

You guys have not been educated/trained appropriately in order to have an informed technical discussion...

You have a bunch of uneducated/untrained people in Indonesia who dont know how to establish and operate sanitation systems and just discard their refuse on the ground and then instead of identifying the REAL educational deficiencies over there, somehow in your convoluted disqualified minds, you literally blame the sanitation problems on a figure of speech...

Must be nice...

Matt Franko said...

Here:

https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-09-16/paris-police-dismantle-tent-camp-where-2100-migrants-were-living-squalid

You have a "capitalism!" area in France before which is clean/sanitary... THEN you bring in a bunch of uneducated/untrained turd worlders and the place soon looks like a shit hole... and it is the SAME "capitalism!" area France where this happened...

So how can it be "capitalism!" when it was clean before and then it is shitty all of a sudden? and its the SAME PLACE?????

You cant blame REAL problems on figures of speech.... grow up.... or get some training...

Noah Way said...

History is the documentation of the continuous taking of resources and labor without permission or concern for anything other than financial gain.

But clearly Matt is correct, all of the problems in Indonesia are the result of not having sanitation engineers. Thanks for clearing that up for us, Matt.

Matt Franko said...

Its a general lack of education over there...

The better material systems outcomes will be co-located where the higher educated of the population reside...

Simsalablunder said...

"You guys have not been educated/trained appropriately in order to have an informed technical discussion..."

It's obvious that Matt hasn't been trained in how to not ascribe others this and that...................

Which makes it impossible to have fruitful discussions with Matt who cannot identify that he uses straw men arguments over and over again........................................

He's not competent enough to be involved in discussions..............................