On Communism. (Yes, again. Blame my History EE)

Disclaimer: I'm not a communist. I'm not even a socialist. To me, Communism is (for lack of a better word) retarded.
This blog post is written without any evidence, and yes it is filled with hasty and broad generalizations. But as a friend said to me, "but opinionated articles are much more fun, so who cares"





I am annoyed, I promised myself and several friends that I would be for once positive this week..

Write a happy piece: complementing the world, complementing people and their ideology.

But no, far from the happy-go-lucky smiling me during the daytime, I can't write that way. It seems that all the joy in me cannot possibly be transferred to blogs in general.

So, please just bear with me as I, once again, am the whiny idiot ranting about other people's idiocy. (Ironic, no?)

It all started this bright and sunny afternoon, I just returned from my dentist with a delightful progress report , instead of just idly watching Heroes on DVD, I for once was sparked with a need to be productive, and so.. turned on my Internet and proceeded to research the G30S or Gerakan 30 September (My Extended Essay topic).

Alright, yes, I wasn't being entirely diligent. I Facebooked and YouTubed whilst researching, but the YouTube-ing was rather rewarding, I found this great (yet terribly sad) video of the 1965 Coup and the ensuing Anti-Communist purge.


I watched all 20 minutes of the video and soon happily commented; but what started as a grateful and filled with august comment turned, not so .. positive ..

You see, my outrage and most of my blog entries start with something – or to be more specific (suggestion: add 'to help those with limited brain capacity to process data' in brackets), imbeciles. I must once again apologize, for always (and somewhat conveniently) bashing random Internet people, but seriously...

Westaquil wrote:

"If there are people killed who are not Communists, I feel sympathy. If there are people killed who are Communists, there's nothing to be sad about. The Communists in Indonesia terrorized the rural areas in the lead up to 1965. Of course, this part is always conveniently forgotten."

To be less petty, this sort of sordid mentality is shared by millions of Indonesians. Years of hopeless indoctrination by the state and society has left us Indonesians irrevocably brainwashed and susceptible moronic rants filled ignorance.

But seriously, what is it with this country and its unfathomable hatred of all things related to Communism? Oh yes, they were at fault, oh yes, they have attempted a coup, oh yes they were scheming people all too happy to seize everyone's money and lands. Yes, they were godless people. But they were, and still are, not the direct spawn of Satan nor were they planning to kill everyone within sight.

After all, Communism is merely an ideology, an ideology, that in the hands of dictators and overly-zealous individual advocates, have troubled the life of many. But in the end, that is the works of a Communist, not communism itself. It's always those people in power that corrupts and destroys everything, whether they be a communist or a fascist.

So I'm so terribly distraught over the callous and idiotic fear that resounds every time the word COMMUNIST is uttered.

I questioned my cousin earlier today with a grin of what they taught when I said the word, communist. With a wince she quickly but somewhat hesitantly replied, "Evil, cruel". I just nodded and passed her a plate of Xiao Long Pao to eat, but inside, I can't help but be horribly dismayed at how even the most modern of teenagers today are still stuck in the *oh-my-God-there's-EVIL-Communists* mindset. It's not her fault, I know it is not; there is no one I can't direct all my anger too. But I can't help but be be aggravated by the fact that a single word can invoke such frantic and incomprehensible disgust.

Why are we so boggled up in our misconstrued conceptions? It was not until I choose to do my Extended Essay on Indonesian History that I was finally awaken of the numerous indoctrinations taught to me in my elementary IPS lessons.

An indoctrination still in motion, still unawakened in the mind of my peers, my cousins, my fellow countrymen.

Sutiyoso's "Brilliance"

You, the reader, would most probably view me as someone of most ardent cynicism and hatred. You’re probably right. Disappointingly, I remain in this state of abhorrent lunacy – more so after the recent reduction of roads in West Jakarta and the resultant gridlock of this dung-hole.

A quick google search of Sutiyoso – governor of this great labyrinthine maze of urban garbage we call Jakarta – reveals admirably positive publicity. The man is blindly regarded by the press as a great pioneer for Jakarta’s infrastructure.

The busway, they say, is our city’s “brilliant” answer to public transportation. True, the provision public transportation has been improved over these past seven years. But something meant to ease the congestion here has, in fact, done the exact opposite.
Sutiyoso’s brainchild has taken up about one of three lanes of virtually every major thoroughfare of Jakarta. Roads, already underprovided, are taken up to give room for a bus lane that is barely functional. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the fastest growing market in the world for motorcycles, and what is left of Jakarta’s roads are infested by these ridiculously reckless two-wheelers. Tragedy befalls us - the growth of the market for cars here is no less substantial.

It would help if the busway was, at the very least functional. At peak hours, one must queue for fifteen minutes before being able to enter the overcrowded busses of claustrophobic suffocation. So while commuting on the busway itself is fast, the queue counterbalances this. While these underprovided busses can only carry about forty people at a time, the bus lane is virtually empty with no only one or two busses in sign, with the remaining lanes in gridlock. Even at full capacity, the amount of people traveling per hour in the busway is considerably lesser than a lane’s potential capacity if cars were allowed to make use of it.

Sutiyoso plans to expand his busway network by adding about seven more lines. Meanwhile, it’s taking us ten years to finish only a twelve kilometer part of the Jakarta outer ring road. Jakarta further decays to excrement each year and they call it progress.

Yes, the poor are somewhat advantaged by this testament of blind idiocy, but at what expense? Our commute times are doubled; we waste petrol on road-queuing while the fuel market climbs upwards as Indonesia faces double digit inflation.

True that the busway is much cheaper than say, a subway, or some other actually effective mean of public transport. But why resort to a cheap failure? Wouldn’t the finances be put to better use if an effective subway line – one that actually reduces congestion – was built, as opposed to five busway lines which only makes things worse?

Even more ridiculous is the corruption that obviously reeks in these “one billion rupiah busses.” Reading the promotion of these “advanced busses” costing over “one billion rupiah” in our newspapers numbs me with constipation.

What will our metropolis be reduced to when Sutioyoso’s dreams are realized? Ineptitude and immorality plagues our bureaucracy, that “progress” is negative that despite Indonesia’s rapid economic growth, unemployment and poverty figures are higher than ever.

I hope that the people whom we entrust our tax money in will someday, God knows how, actually be capable of advancing this rancid nation. But I’ve come to realize that it has been ten years since the 1997 monetary crises and still we remain lamentably pathetic. Prospect is faint; who do we turn to?

Catholics and Christians

Note: I’m blabbering, I’m a blabbering moron. This post is seriously rambling and blabbering! See! I am blabbering! Wohoo! *promotes self down to A2 SL*

***

being edited*

*vitriolic/ Steph

Indonesia, not a Democracy?

"The Attorney General Office’s banning of some history books.

On 5th March, the Attorney General’s Office banned the further printing and distribution of thirteen history books from the 2004 junior and senior high school curriculums because they play down the role of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) in the 1948 uprising in Madiun, East Java, and the 1965 coup attempt in Jakarta.

According to the AGO the books not only failed to state the facts about the PKI’s role in the events but went further and challenged some “accepted truths”, which could create public disorder. The AGO has the authority to monitor the circulation of written materials and has in the past banned a number of books deemed capable of disrupting political stability since the Soeharto era."

http://www.indonesiamatters.com/1172/book-banning/

Disclaimer: This is a piece I wrote for History, one that I sort of rewrote, and one that all history students are familiar off! Sorry people and Ms. Jess, (IT IS A CURRENT EVENTS PIECE) if it’s a just a temporary entry, all the homework and tests pilling up forbid me from making a coherent nice piece..

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

August 1950, Harry Truman sent this message to Congress; that despite all the problems that the Communist Soviet Union has caused America, Congress does not have the right to silence communist ideas and teachings. Ignoring dissents made and insults hurled at him, he stayed true to the fundamentals of democracy; liberty and equality.

To him, democracy meant that the government could not control what its citizen’s listens, reads or says, to him, democracy meant that the government had no right to declare and demand submission from its people and be treated as if they were subjects instead of citizens. Truman is correct; the idea of banning thoughts is the very betrayal of all that is democracy.

Americans are so fortunate; they also have presidents with backbones. *cough* SBY *cough*

Today's government has by and large ignored the fundamental freedom promised by democracy, FREE SPEECH. Even today the fear of saying what we truly want still looms in our head. In my head.

Friends advise me not to be too vocal, sadly they are right.

It has been 9 years since the fall of Soeharto, a fall that would have supposedly lead us to a true democracy. A democracy that entails free speech, a freedom that for so many years have been suppressed and caged tightly by Soeharto.

Now the ban and the propaganda against Communists is still alive and healthy. In public schools, and even National Plus schools, the young and even the old still mostly fear Communism although not knowing what it means; all they know is that Communists had killed the heroic generals back in 1965.

Book burning and book banning is still alive, still active. The Attorney General’s Office censor history books, and in doing so aren't they hailing themselves supreme in intelligence? Are they not proclaiming that those bureaucrats in the Attorney General's Office are superior to ordinary civilians, superior to us?

The truth is that the government is still supreme, and a true Indonesian Democracy has not been accomplished. You would argue that it’s better now, it’s free now. But they have and still are successful in indoctrinating Indonesians their warped account for their past.

North Korea claims that they are democratic, a claim that is absurd. Sadly, there is a similar danger with Indonesia.

We can claim we are democratic, but if our actions and our government actions totally rebuke the foundations of democracy we too, could fall back to Soeharto’s era, banning and freedom of speech is a slippery slope.

One that hopefully Indonesia will not slip once more.

Note: I'm not proposing that we are not a Democratic country, only that in this aspect we're defying all that is democratic, and the dangers to it.

Indonesia's Incredibly Bright Future

Note: Somehow, this post (Indonesia's Incredibly Bright Future) written and posted on Wednesday was deleted accidentally. So I'm reposting it regretfully.

Disclaimer: I wrote this on caffeine high and this post contains broad generalizations and does not carry the opinions of other A1 HL-ers in my group.

As an Indonesian teenager who is more proficient in writing in English than in her own native language, I often feel ashamed of my incompetence in Indonesian.

I love writing in English, I hate writing in Indonesian.

I love English Literature; I often have problems reading Indonesian Literature.

It is a sad irony and predicament for many young International educated youths today.

I don’t know from where exactly this inadequacy comes from, nor when will it end.

What is the draw of the English language anyway? Is it naturally more beautiful, most audiophilically pleasing? Is it simply a matter of taste?

Are we, young Indonesians ashamed of our country, and thus our native language? Are we just too sick and tired in the reality of this country?

A gloriously corrupt nation whose ex-president (and probably our favorite) stole $35 billion from our country and despite all his crimes still lounges at his Cendana home?

Or is it something shallower, more sinister?

Maybe we decide, hey, English makes us special, makes us more exclusive. SUPERIOR even in comparison to the national school kids.

I think so.

Amidst globalization and the supremacy of American culture, us young people, gradually and not so gradually see our Chinese, Malay, Javanese, Balinese and our hundreds of cultures as boring, ridiculous, retarded and un-awesome.

We adore bule actors while we mock and laugh at Indonesian ones.

Seeing bule’s down the street we stare, we look, we fancy.

Who cares if they really are just average folks with different pigments? They are Caucasians and thus are cooler and awesome than we are.

Secretly we all want to be Americans and or Europeans, what’s so exotic in being Asian? Most of the countries in our continent are a third world country!

We aren’t Asian Americans, but as someone put it, we’re Americanized Asians.

Well, I am. I, sadly and shamefully am.

It a distressing and often irrevocable trait, I have been raised this way; all of my friends are this way. Apparently my love of English Literature is ironical. I may have read dozens and in a few years, hundreds of English Literature, but how many Indonesian books have I read? Probably less than a dozen!

I can name great writers whom I love and adore. How many Indonesian writers do I like? One.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

Even his work I first read in English, and then properly switched to the Indonesian version.

Even Pram, the Nobel Prize candidate whom I so revere, is mostly unknown and ignored by most of us.

Who cares? We say, he’s dead, and he’s irrelevant! He’s sooo boring.

But that’s not the point is it? He was someone who loved this nation, this country and the people of the Indies. He who spent so many years suffering and toiling for freedom, and wrote, just wrote for our country.

I called several bookstores searching for his most famous and prominent books today. It took me calling more than four stores to finally find it.

One of the person who answered my call and heard the title of the novels, asked me the author of this book! PRAMOEDYA ANANTA TOER! I almost screamed at her.

In Gramedia, Indonesia’s biggest chain bookstore, there are probably only two racks for Indonesian literature; half of it is used up for translated classics and modern works.

But there is dozens of racks for Japanese comic books, and mindlessly moronic Americanized chick-lits.

It has been sixty over years since our independence, almost ten years since the fall of Suharto.

No one cares about the future of this nation.

We all say, someone is going to come along and change all that. Someone is going to take care of it.

Time will fix our nation. Time will make this nation great!

I know sound like a rambling visionary screaming for a change in a world and society deaf and contentedly ignorant on such matters.

Nietzsche said Visionaries lie to themselves, and liars lie to other people only. Though he is right in certain ways, he’s still incorrect and the insane Nietzsche we all love.

We are already lying to ourselves anyhow. We’re ignoring who we are (genetically), and happily too!

So, to the foreigners I say with a dyed blonde hair, blue contact lenses, black tank top, jeans and a perky smile, “Hi welcome to Indonesia, we are the new generation of Indonesians, oh don’t worry we speak English, we live the American way! We don’t give crap about Indonesia!”