Indonesia

Indonesia’s new shining city of the hill (Image: Andre Vltchek © 2020)
Andre Vltchek and Mira Lubis
21st Century Wire

Submitted by InfoBrics, authored by Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies…

There are obviously some serious linguistic issues and disagreements between the West and the rest of the world. Essential terms like “freedom”, “democracy”, “liberation”, even “terrorism”, are all mixed up and confused; they mean something absolutely different in New York, London, Berlin, and in the rest of the world.

I am not sure when and how it happened or even what precisely took place, but suddenly, nothing feels the same, and nothing feels right in Malaysia.
Several years ago, things used to be totally different here. One would land at KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) – in the past one of the most modern and well-run mid-sized airports in the world, located some 70 kilometers from the city – and feel the omnipresent optimism and pride.

It’s 3,350 miles from Canberra, capital of Australia, to Jakarta, capital-- for now-- of Indonesia, a little less than 7 hours by air.Air quality index (AQI) readings above 200 are considered dangerous to human health. A reading over 300 means no one should go outdoors. This week in Canberra readings were over 3,000-- sometimes double that. And some of the Canberra suburbs like Monash and Florey were even worse.

Jakarta – polluted, unloved
It is wrong, totally wrong, to abandon Jakarta and try to build some Potemkin village in the middle of Borneo, an island known in Indonesia as Kalimantan.
There are many reasons why, and we will be addressing at least some of them here.

Student protests, West Papua independence struggle, monstrous forest fires, an assassination attempt against Coordinating Minister, sinking capital city, earthquakes and a collapsing economy – the increasingly religiously fundamentalist Indonesia is suddenly facing too many disasters. It cannot cope with any of them.
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There is sudden rush by countries for island real estate. Some of this “island fever” is driven by global climate change. Some countries are looking for strategic advantages in a new geo-political order, one where American influence has drastically ebbed.

More than ten years ago, in Nadi, Fiji, during a UN conference, I was approached by the Minister of Education of Papua New Guinea (PNG).
He was deeply shaken, troubled, his eyes full of tears: “Please help our children,” he kept repeating:

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