Jakarta (urban stereoscopy)

Lobby: Gran Melia Jakarta

Stereoscopy: Stereoscopy consists of two simultaneous space-based observations.

Or:

“The simultaneity of virtual and real environments” (from “Perpetuating Cities: Excepting Globalization and the Southeast Asia Supplement”, Bishop, Phillips, and Yeo, in : Post Colonialism: Southeast Asian Cities and Global Processes, Routledge, London, 2003.)

The Magical Misery Tour is waiting to take you away, waiting to take you away, take you away…

Photo: The Jakarta Post 7/22/09

Your bus awaits. All aboard.

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Today our tour takes us to Kunciran subdistrict, Tangerang municipality where our senses will be ignited by the horrific scene of a second wife burning.

As seen here by The Jakarta Post:

First wife burns second wife in front of husband

Multa Fidrus , The Jakarta Post , Tangerang | Wed, 07/29/2009 9:13 PM | Jakarta

“Jenni, 35, a resident of Kunciran subdistrict, Tangerang municipality, has burned Euis, 25, her husband’s second wife, after their husband Sahroni, 40, asked them to live together with him in peace and share the house.

Tangerang Police chief Sr. Comr. Hamidin said Wednesday the incident started with Euis promising she would divorce Sahroni after entrusting her baby to Jenni.

“But later Euis came to Jenny and asked for her baby back,” Hamidin said.

The two argued and Jenni took a jerrycan of gasoline, poured it onto Euis’s body and set her on fire.

Jenni then rushed to the police station with the baby to turn herself in. Euis was taken to hospital with 90 percent of her body burnt.”

Then we are off to The Gran Melia Jakarta for an early lunch.

Timeless Luxury with an Avant-Garde Flair

Discover the Bold New Shade of Luxury.

As you must know the

“Gran Meliá Jakarta hotel is a stimulus of exoticism and mystery; imbued by the warmth and passion of South East Asia. A dramatic structure, towering over the community of Kuningan, looking out to Jakarta’s elaborate skyline.

The luxury hotel’s unique, swerving architecture is coated in a distinct azure that seemingly drifts into the clouds. Within, Gran Meliá Jakarta hotel broadcasts a similar and enchanting aesthetic, communicating the spirit and vitality of Indonesian culture with grand, cascading ceilings, and evocative décor.

Situated at the heart of Jakarta’s exclusive diplomatic and business district, the hotel is in exact vicinity to the city’s premier shopping malls, attractions, and the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.

Gran Meliá Jakarta’s world-renowned restaurants and bars, event facilities, spa, and tiered accommodations are fashioned by a discriminating auteur and showcased as a bold new expression of luxury.”

Lunch is served. We certainly hope that you bring a hearty appetite. You will need it.

We will then continue our tour to the site of the St. Moritz. A self-contained city within a city.

Come to Jakarta and not see it at all.

In fact come and never leave as all your wishes, desires, and needs can be serviced in one cradle to the grave stop.

St. Moritz will become to a global city in Asia

” Mochtar’s first grand son, Michael Riyadi will leading the projet of St. Moritz Penthouse and Residences in this year projects, a multi billion dollar projects to establish a new business district in Puri Kembangan, West Jakarta.

St. Moritz will have 17 buildings that will provide 11 centers in one area, including office buildings, apartments, schools, a hotel, a hospital and a mall.

This project will be a blast in the future and will help people to cut commuting time in Jakarta. The office building has 65 floors and will be the tallest in Indonesia.

The 135-hectare land plot is designed to be a self-sustaining business district with a block concept. We also want the new business district to be a global city, competing not with other developers, but with other cities in Southeast Asia.

This projects will become to a global city in Asia and also have a competitive advantage. Property prices in Jakarta are among the cheapest in the world.

According to Global Property Guide 2008, the average apartment price in Jakarta is US$1,068 per square meter while in Manila it is $1,969. In Kuala Lumpur, it’s $1,400.”

Well, I bet you have never seen anything like it!

Oh, we’re not done yet! Not by a long shot.

Prepare yourselves now to see THE REAL JAKARTA!

As reported by CNN:

Slum tourism: Visitors see the ‘real’ Jakarta

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) — Hidden in the alleyways behind Jakarta’s fancy malls and in between the high-rise apartment buildings is what Ronny Poluan, a former film maker, calls the “real Jakarta.”

It is not far from the glitz and glam that dominates the capital’s skyline, yet it is a side of the city that few foreigners ever see.

“I want them to (have an) authentic view,” Poluan, who runs “Jakarta Hidden Tours,” said as he took a group of Australians through the winding maze of a central Jakarta slum.

“I’m running out of rice,” an old lady mumbles in the doorway of her tiny dark home as the group passes by.

Further along, little girls push their faces into wire fencing, while another group of children draw 36-year-old Daniel Knott into a game of cards. Knott, a volunteer for various NGOs, and his wife, who works for AUSAID, live in Jakarta and have been to the slums before. But it is the first time their friends, Kerri Bell and her husband Phil Paschke, have been to Indonesia.

Knott said he felt it was important to bring the visiting couple here.

“I think Jakarta is a city of contrasts,” he said. “There’s a lot of shopping malls and kitschy stuff, but it’s also a lot of normal people. And, it’s fun to come and hang out with the locals, actually.”

“It’s fantastic,” Kerri Bell said. “I’ve been in Asia once before and we didn’t want to just gloss over the surface and see all the things you can see in a western country. It feels to me much more like the real Jakarta, to see what drives it. To see that is so much more valuable than coming and lying on the beach.”

The tour first took them into a couple of cramped and sweltering soy bean cake and tofu factories — both staples in the Indonesian diet. Video Watch Arwa Damon tour through the slum »

The group remarked that there were few other cities where foreigners can wander around the slums, and not just feel safe but welcomed — and that is what Poluan said these tours were all about.

“I want to see people meet people,” he said. “The other culture meet the other culture.”

“It’s a pretty big eye opener,” Paschke said. “It’s the first time I have left Australia, so yes, it’s completely different.”

Poluan ushered the group into a covered market where you can find just about anything. For the group, it was a bombardment of the senses.

“I love seeing them,” fish seller Rokayah said, laughing. “They are handsome and they are rich. It is rare for me to see foreigners here at the traditional market, and I like talking to them, but I don’t understand English.”

The tour costs around $34 per person. Poluan keeps about half of the money for himself and his NGO, INTERKULTUR. The other half goes to the community.

Critics, however, said that this type of direct cash aid was counter-productive. They said the tours were demeaning, exploited the poor, and taught them to be dependent on the handouts of others.

“These poor people, we have to educate them,” said Wardah Hafidz, coordinator of the Urban Poor Consortium. “We have to tell them that it’s not God’s will that they are poor, that they also have to fight for themselves. They can’t depend on other people forever.”

This type of criticism angers and frustrates Poluan, who said his tours were about raising awareness on both sides. In the last month, he has also started a microfinance scheme.

More importantly though, he said, were the initiatives that he hoped his tours would jumpstart.

“They (the foreigners) usually think about how to help, to educate,” he said. “They come back again, bring books. I try to make a pushcart library for the children.”

He said his tours were also about educating foreigners on real issues facing the country.

The group weaved its way to the city’s train tracks, only barely visible amid the garbage and squalor.

It is the site of a constant battle between the track dwellers and the government, which says that living there is illegal and dangerous. Government evictions and the destruction of the feeble structures, usually just bits of plastic tarp and wood, are fairly commonplace.

“I am used to it,” shrugged 80-year-old Indarjo.

He has lived like this for five decades, making his living as a scavenger. He said he has been forced to move over 200 times.

He invited the group into his home, and explained that when it rains, he just pulls the flap over.

“I feel that I am equal to them. I treat them as my guests,” he said. “I believe that they would do the same for me.”

The visitors were dumbstruck, the impact of what they were seeing, they say, was hard to put into words.

It was a sobering but educational look at Indonesia, where some 40 million people live below the poverty line.

“It’s pretty confronting,” Paschke said. “The things you complain about at home don’t seem too significant.”

“It’s hard to see something like this and just go home to normal life,” his wife, Bell, added as the couple stood in the middle of the tracks. “It makes me motivated to look at the local community and things that we can help out with at home.”

Yes, see Jakarta now in its unreal realness. Really.

At the end of the day we will whisk you back aboard our open air bus to the JW Marriott or Ritz Carlton. As you prefer.

They’ve just reopened. It’s business as usual.

Next up, high tea at Jakartass Towers where we will converse  at length on the subject of what is real and what is not.

Jakarta (flu burung, the jet set, one stop living)

Chicken Bedja by ~toQDuj

 From the AP:

Indonesian man dies of bird flu, official says
August 2, 2008

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – An Indonesian factory worker died of bird flu, bringing the death toll in the country worst hit by the virus to 112, a top health official said Sunday.

The 19-year-old died last week in a hospital just west of the capital, Jakarta, Nyoman Kandun, the director general of communicable disease control at the Health Ministry, said by text message. He gave no additional information.

Indonesia has regularly recorded human deaths from bird flu since the virus began ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in 2003. Its toll of 112 accounts for nearly half the 240 recorded fatalities worldwide.

Bird flu remains hard for people to catch, but health experts worry that the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between humans, possibly triggering a pandemic that could kill millions. So far most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.

Scientists have warned that Indonesia, which has millions of backyard chickens and poor medical facilities, is a potential hot spot for the start of a global pandemic. …> go to article

 ”112″ being reported, that is. I wonder what is REALLY going on? Probably something very scary related to something extremely incompetent related to something out the “black box” bureau of the CIA.  Not that I am paranoid or something like that, mind you, but given the track record for things like this it usually ends up poorly and with high government officials getting promoted, surely a bad sign.

So…why not take the edge off and spend a week or two or three at the luxurious Hotel Mulia Senayan.

Fantastic idea.

Majestic feel: The hotel lobby is a sight to behold.

As reported in The Star online:

Jet, set, Jakarta
By Mark Lean

“Even in these trying times, luxury never goes out of style at Hotel Mulia Senayan.

Could I spend 48 hours in Jakarta without leaving the hotel?

That’s a tall order, but considering that the establishment in question was Hotel Mulia Senayan (HMS), which has hosted such illustrious individuals as Jackie Chan, Mariah Carey and Lee Kuan Yew, I’d say possibly…

This was my first trip to the Indonesian capital, and the flight had unfortunately been a bumpy one. My flying jitters were very quickly forgotten, though, the moment I walked into the hotel lobby.

The flower arrangements and the warm smiles of the staff immediately helped to put me at ease. And the first thing I did when I entered my room was to jump on the bed in true Discovery Travel and Living fashion. After all, if I was going to do a hotel review properly, I might as well give the bed a serious test.

It didn’t even creak. And the bed’s 1,000 thread-count silk blend fabric was very lulling to lie on.

I might have experienced a turbulent flight on the way to Jakarta, but it was all smooth sailing from this point on. My room was bathed in warm, lustrous sepia hues. Mood lighting and plush carpeting added the finishing touches to the five-star experience.

Even better was the yummy assortment of chocolates that came with the welcoming note.

Oh, there was even a “pillow menu” listing the different types of pillows available. But, I was quite happy with what was already on hand.

Breakfast bright and early

It must have been either the comfortable bed or the chocolates, but I overslept, and had barely enough time to make it for breakfast at The Café, the hotel’s recently refurbished 24-hour restaurant.

Racing down, I was greeted by staff who were both personable and eager to help. The night before, I’d requested an adapter for my computer, and, sure enough, an adapter was waiting for me on my room table when I returned.

According to general manager Richard P. Appelbaum, the HMS has, despite its 996 rooms, been successful in creating a level of service comparable to boutique-styled establishments.

“The essence for us at Hotel Mulia Senayan is to create, train and educate our over 1,700 employees to have a detail-oriented service mindset,” explains Appelbaum who is from Germany. “All our guest services-oriented systems and procedures are tailor-made to identify our guest in such a manner that a personalised service is provided at all times.”

Described by Condé Nast Traveller magazine as an “award-winning hotel” and a “kind of city sanctuary you can’t believe you’ve been lucky enough to stumble upon,” the HMS has become a favourite of business travellers with highly specialised needs and wants.

With its fully equipped business centre, meeting rooms, and a stylish bar to celebrate that hard-won business contract, it is indeed a hotel that will leave even the most demanding of guests very little to complain about.

Owned by the Mulia Group, one of Indonesia’s largest conglomerates, the HMS, which celebrated a decade of operations last year, is an independently owned hotel. This means that security concerns, a usual point of contention amongst the international five-star chains in Jakarta, are less of an issue.

Crystals and cuisine

The HMS is a clever blend of the usual standards of international luxury and some quirky touches. This is evident in the ultra-modern interior of The Café, an imaginatively decorated space boasting the only Swarovski-decorated private dining room in a Jakarta hotel.

Designed by Memphis-based firm, Wilson & Associates, The Café is a delicious design scheme inspired by the five elements of earth, water, fire, wood, and gold.

The Café is packed for breakfast, lunch and dinner with a clientele that comprises both tourists and locals. Apparently, the Indonesians are fond of checking in for the weekend, especially during the school holidays.

For lunch, The Café serves a jaw-dropping spread. A personal favourite of mine is their help-yourself servings of scallops and prawns in a bowl of spicy tom yam. Austrian executive chef Franz Liftenegger and his team like nothing better than to add variety and to encourage indulgence through the offerings at The Café, as well as the other HMS restaurants, like the Italian Il Mare, the Japanese Edogin, and the Chinese Samudra Shark’s Fin.

And to work off all that food, the hotel has a gym boasting many a treadmill and other things besides. If you prefer to unwind in less strenuous conditions, then proceed to the Mulia Spa for a candle-lit, aromatherapy-infused slice of heaven.

Greater developments are afoot at HMS, according to Appelbaum.

“We are creating a full integrated 24-hour butler service for our Executive Mulia Club Floors. We are also developing a new restaurant concept which will be in line with the currently reopened The Café,” says the affable general manager.

The latest addition to HMS is their yet-to-be-named chocolate boutique, which sells confectionery in Hermes Birkin bag and Christian Louboutin shoes.

So did I manage to spend 48 hours without leaving the hotel?

Well, almost. The call of the shopping malls proved too tempting, and I just had to sneak out for a few hours to stock up on jamu remedies and layer cake.

Hotel Mulia Senayan

Jalan Asia Africa, Senayan
Jakarta, 10270
Indonesia
Tel: (66-21) 575 3299
Website: www.hotelmulia.com

Rates start at US$250++ for a Mulia Splendor room.”

Are you F**KING kidding me? Well? There is a #&%$!!! “pillow menu”.  What can I say? I guess I will just have to go shopping. Maybe I will buy a chicken or two or three. What say you?

 Yes, grab a few chickens and head home to…

No, better yet, take up residence at the new CBD Pluit. It’s a “One Stop Living Concept… LIVING, WORKING, SHOPPING @ ONE PLACE”. 

In my mind I’m there already… just minutes from downtown Jakarta.

I am sure that when I am there all the chickens I will ever need will come to me riding in a blue becak peddled by a kindly chicken farmer…

 

 

 

 

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Jakarta (global climate change and the wealth of nations)

East Jakarta, 2008

“It is the business of the future to be dangerous”

-A.N. Whitehead

This morning I decided to turn on the TV and check the news. The first thing I saw along the bottom of the screen in the CNN news ticker was “4,118 US forces dead in Iraq.” 

The war in Iraq is not only a war for oil, as all the Bush adminstration rationales for the war have now been exposed as blatant lies and intentional fraud, it is a war for oil profits led by war criminals.

From N.Y. Times, 7/11/2008

Book Cites Secret Red Cross Report of C.I.A. Torture of Qaeda Captives

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 11, 2008
Correction Appended

WASHINGTON – Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes, according to a new book on counterterrorism efforts since 2001. …> go to article

From AFP

Antarctic Ice Shelf ‘Hanging by Thread’: European Scientists

PARIS – New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.

Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is “hanging by its last thread” to Charcot Island, one of the plate’s key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.

“Since the connection to the island… helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk,” it said. …> go to article

Brilliant Plans to Destroy the Planet: The World Bank Tackles Climate Change

By Janet Redman, Institute for Policy Studies. Posted July 11, 2008.

President Bush and other leaders of the industrialized world managed to produce a masterfully vague, loophole-ridden statement on climate change at a Group of 8 summit held at a secluded resort on the banks of Lake Toyako in Japan this week.

Meanwhile, thousands of delegates from grassroots movements transformed tranquil Odori Park in downtown Sapporo into the central nervous system of a bottom-up response to ecologically destructive development policies. On the opening day of the G8 summit, activists from every continent joined Japanese environmental and global justice groups in the streets brandishing banners, flags and megaphones. Their message was unambiguous: “Climate Justice, Yes! World Bank, No!” …

…Also offensive to developing countries is that the World Bank is asking the countries least responsible for causing climate change to take out loans to help pay for adapting to the inevitable impacts. According to the G8 statement, rich country “donations” to the Strategic Climate Fund will count toward those nations’ obligations for development aid, stretching an already pitiful sum impossibly thin.

Piling more debt onto many already heavily indebted nations will mean less money for climate-related disaster preparedness, emergency services and food shortages in the future.

World Bank Climate Hypocrisy

The World Bank’s effort to reinvent itself as the global climate crusader is a dangerous charade. With $2 billion already spent on coal, oil and gas projects this year, the World Bank continues to be among the world’s largest multilateral financiers of greenhouse-gas-emitting projects in the developing world.

The new Climate Investment Funds proposed by the United States and others will house the Clean Technology Fund. Donations from rich countries will ostensibly be used to bring low-carbon technologies to developing countries, and clean energy access to their poorest citizens. But environmental groups have taken to calling the Clean Technology Fund the Slightly Less Dirty Technology Fund because of the bank’s outright support for slightly more efficient coal power…

U.S. Role

Fiery protest in Japan was matched by a chilly reception among some members of the U.S. Congress to the Bush administration’s request for a $2 billion donation to the World Bank’s new funds. Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, pointed out at a recent committee hearing on a U.S. contribution that the “World Bank is not seen as an institution friendly to the environment” and that it seems to “spend one day a month protecting the environment and the other 29 days destroying it.” Still, it’s likely that Congress will authorize the money…” …> go to article

Janet Redman is a researcher for the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., where she provides analysis of the international financial institutions’ energy investment and carbon finance activities. She is the author of the recent report “World Bank: Climate Profiteer.”

Cheney’s staff censored EPA, ex-official alleges
Warming’s effects on health at issue

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post / July 9, 2008

WASHINGTON – Members of Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former official of the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday.

In a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, Jason Burnett, former EPA deputy associate administrator, said an official from Cheney’s office ordered that six pages be edited out of the testimony last October of Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Several media outlets, including The Washington Post, reported at the time that Gerberding had planned to say that the “CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern,” among other passages. White House officials said then that they questioned the scientific basis of aspects of Gerberding’s draft testimony.

Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the administration feared that Gerberding’s testimony would force the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. The White House has opposed mandatory limits and insisted that voluntary measures and increased research are the best way to address the issue. …> go to article

Is this picture becoming clear?

Follow the Money (an example)

Thomson Financial News
Indonesia’s Adaro sets IPO this week after securing approval
07.06.08, 10:22 PM ET

JAKARTA (Thomson Financial) – Indonesian integrated coal company PT Adaro Energy Tbk said on Monday it has scheduled its $1.3 billion initial public offering for Tuesday through Friday after obtaining approval from the capital market regulator Bapepam-LK.

Adaro is planning to sell 11.3 billion shares or 34 percent of its enlarged capital at 1,100 rupiah a share, making the IPO the biggest ever on the Indonesian stock market.

Adaro Indonesia is the country’s second-biggest coal company after PT Bumi Resources Tbk.

In 2007 Adaro produced 40 million tonnes of coal and sold 36.6 million tonnes, while Bumi sold 55.4 million tonnes of coal.

The shares will be listed on the Indonesian stock exchange on July 16.

The IPO was originally set for June 24 to 26 but was delayed due to issues relating to a share ownership dispute as well as tax and royalty payments.

Adaro Energy currently owns 61.23 percent of Adaro Indonesia, and has a 61.8 percent stake in Indonesia Bulk Terminal and 58.89 percent of Coaltrade Services International Pte. Ltd. …> go to article

 RPT-Indonesian “rent-a-mob” queue for $1.3 bln coal IPO
Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:39am

By Andreas Ismar

JAKARTA, July 10 (Reuters) – They didn’t look like your typical investors, as they queued under the scorching sun in Jakarta’s posh business district for shares in Indonesia’s biggest, hottest, initial public offering PT Adaro Energy.

There were women carrying babies, and men in flip-flops, shorts and faded T-shirts — the poor and unemployed, bussed in from Jakarta’s suburbs or slums and paid to stand in line for others.

Adaro Energy, Indonesia’s second-biggest coal miner by output, offered $1.3 billion of shares for sale this week, but most of those are earmarked for connected parties and many other investors are scrambling to get hold of the stock.

That’s where hundreds of people like Hilmawati and Arif come in, earning 25,000-35,000 rupiah ($2.70-$3.80) to queue up for shares on behalf of a man they called “the boss” .

“I’ve been waiting here since 7 o’clock, waiting for them to open at 10,” said Hilmawati, a 30-year-old housewife, as she waited in front of the exhibition hall in Jakarta’s Sudirman Central Business District.

“I’ve been going back and forth three times already. The officials were cruel, they asked so many questions, I just say I came from here,” she said, brandishing an order form from state-owned Danareksa Sekuritas.

“We came in one bus, 50 of us. For one form we got 25,000 rupiah, excluding lunch money, they take care of the transport. Later they will take us back home at four o’clock. If we got the form we give it to the leader, if not we won’t get paid,” said Hilmawati, adding that she knew nothing about Adaro or shares.

The boss uses their names and IDs to apply for multiple share allocations, betting that some, if not all, will be successful.

Brokers in Jakarta admit privately that this is a common practice to get shares in “hot” issues. In a country with millions of poor and unemployed, it is easy to rent a crowd, whether to buy shares or to gather in protest.

Several big foreign investors active in Asia have grumbled that they were shut out of the Adaro offering despite heavy overseas interest in what is seen as an attractively priced offering.

The deal underscores the opacity that sometimes plagues Southeast Asia’s biggest country and gives international investors pause. Red tape and rampant corruption are also frequent complaints.

On Thursday, a few applicants were turned away because of their scruffy attire, but entrepreneurs were at hand, renting out business shirts and ties, so that would-be investors could look the part.

“I cannot get in because of my shoes, they said we must wear leather shoes. They screen us by our looks,” said Arif, an unemployed man in his twenties who said he had at least tried to do some homework on the share offering.

“This is a kind of mining company, you know, coal. Many people know nothing about Adaro, I just tried to find out about it, asking around, hearing what people said.

“We were never informed about this by the boss. What the boss did was just tell us that there’s a share offering, then he gave the print out which contains our name and the company that we should buy.”

Adaro said in a document that 69.15 percent of the 11.14 billion shares offered will be allocated to five investors who already had stakes in PT Adaro Indonesia, a coal miner that Adaro Energy plans to acquire with the proceeds from the IPO. They are Farallon Capital, Kerry Coal, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), and Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Just 22.82 percent of the IPO shares are being allocated to domestic institutions, asset managers, insurers, pension funds, and individuals. (Additional reporting by Harry Suhartono; Editing by Sara Webb) …>go to article

Partners get huge chunk of Indonesia’s Adaro IPO
Wed Jul 9, 2008 11:52am 

By Harry Suhartono and Tony Munroe

JAKARTA/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Shares in PT Adaro Energy’s $1.3 billion IPO, Indonesia’s largest offering, were mostly distributed to connected parties, disappointing some domestic investors and global funds.

Several big foreign investors active in Asia have grumbled that they were shut out of the country’s biggest-ever initial public offering despite heavy overseas interest in what is seen as an attractively priced deal.

The deal underscores the opacity that sometimes plagues Southeast Asia’s biggest country.

No international prospectus was issued, which was surprising to some observers given the size of the IPO, but not unheard of, people familiar with the matter said.

Adaro said in a document that 69.15 percent of the 11.14 billion shares offered will be allocated to five investors who already had stakes in PT Adaro Indonesia, a coal miner that Adaro Energy plans to acquire with the proceeds from the IPO. They are Farallon Capital, Kerry Coal, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research), and Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Just 22.82 percent of the IPO shares are being allocated to domestic institutions, asset managers, insurers, pension funds, and individuals. Schroders Investment Management Indonesia will become the biggest unconnected institutional buyer of the IPO with $12 million worth of shares.

Remaining shares went to foreign investors including Dubai Investment Group, a company document said. …> go to article

Commentary

From my ”comment” on Jakartass post “Blinkers“, July 8, 2008

…I am convinced that the current energy market is being manipulated (in the mix of supply and demand issues and rank speculation) to enrich elites, both in Indonesia and in the United States.

I would argue that the natural resources of Indonesia belong to the Indonesians and not to political cliques or Chinese investors.

… the wealth of the nation (Indonesia) is on a vertical elevator ride to the small percentage of those who sit at the top while it should be spread horizontally to the benefit of society as a whole.

Scarcity of food, fuel and high rates of inflation hurt those at the bottom the most.

Push it to the limits of poverty and indeed as in some places in Indonesia the results are malnutrition and death.

From my ”comment” on Indonesia Matters post “Power Blackouts“, July 12, 2008

“Indonesia is a rich country but we are poor people, why is that?”

I have heard that on more than one occasion from my brother-in-law.

It is part question, part statement, and part indictment.

How can there be an energy crisis in Indonesia when the country is so energy rich?

Globalization, multi-national corporations, and the corrupt political elite have conspired to steal the wealth of Indonesia for the benefit of themselves and at the expense of the national welfare.

This is not inherently an Indonesian problem as we see here in the US record profits being posted by the oil companies the likes which have never been seen in the history of capitalism.

Given the dire warnings we have been given regarding global climate change it seems folly to continue to pursue our fossil fuel way of life but that way of life cannot be changed over night, in a snap.

Oil profits need to be used to stabilize energy needs and invested in alternative sources of energy through developing those technologies through research and development.

More to the point the wealth of the nation needs to be spread horizontally and not vertically.

Right now those profits sit in the bank accounts of the rich and the rest of us can clearly all go to hell.

Indonesia to shift factory hours amid blackouts: vice president
Fri, Jul 11, 2008 AFP

JAKARTA – INDONESIA will move manufacturers’ working hours to weekends in a bid to avoid prolonged rolling blackouts across the country, the vice president said on Friday.

The move, which will also see working hours shifted to off-peak times, has been brought in to avoid burdening the overstrained grid during peak hours.

‘A joint ministerial decree will be signed this afternoon, and will become effective in August,’ Mr Jusuf Kalla told Dow Jones Newsires, without giving further details.

State power monopoly PLN started two weeks of rolling blackouts in Jakarta on Friday after six months of frequent outages on the dense Java-Bali grid cost businesses millions of dollars in losses.

The rolling blackouts in Jakarta are officially due to maintenance work that will interrupt gas supplies to two state-owned generating stations in North Jakarta, but analysts have blamed the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

Analysts have warned electricity shortages could limit economic growth and discourage local and foreign investment in South-east Asia’s largest economy.

‘The economy will not be able to grow above six per cent if (PLN) can’t increase supply by nine per cent annually,’ said Mr Purbaya Sadewa, chief economist at the state-owned investment bank PT Danareksa.

Rising demand for electricity has led to increasing numbers of blackouts across the country in the past few years despite its vast resources of oil, natural gas, coal and geothermal energy.

The power crisis appears to be deteriorating even though only 53 per cent of the archipelago’s 234 million people has access to electricity.

The government is planning to boost capacity by some 30 per cent to about 40,000 megawatts by 2011, but the first new power station is not expected to be operational until mid-2009.” …> go to article

 

My favorite quote of late is from A. N. Whitehead, “It is the business of the future to be dangerous“.

We will soon see just how dangerous it will be.

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Jakarta (Jakarta is coming)

Detail, from monument at Lubang Buaya

Why is this?

Malnutrition kills 21 Indonesia toddlers

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – At least 21 toddlers have died of malnutrition in eastern Indonesia in recent months due to a food shortage that threatens the lives of thousands more children, a local health official said Thursday.

An additional 116 youngsters have been admitted to clinics and hospitals in critical condition, said Stephanus Bria Seran, who heads the health department in East Nusa Tenggara province.

“We urgently need medicine and nutritional foods to save the children,” he said. “We are racing against time because they need nutritious food within 30 days if we want to save their lives.”

The food shortages have been caused by flooding and drought. Farmers fear the next harvest may also fail due to excessive rainfall and landslides.

Children’s diets began lacking sufficient nutrients, causing diseases, hospitalizations and deaths over the past six months, he said.

In the same period, nearly 85,000 children have been registered as malnourished in the province, one of the country’s least developed.

The figures show a sharp jump from the whole of 2007, when 10 toddlers died out of 68,000 registered as malnourished in the province. …> go to article

Or this?

Hungry monkeys raid farmland around Indonesia’s Borobudur temple

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP): Bands of starving monkeys have destroyed crops around Indonesia’s famous Borobudur Buddhist temple in search of food their habitat can no longer supply, an official said Wednesday.

Thousands of long-tailed macaques went searching for sustenance in several villages of Central Java province, said Dedi Rinyadi, who works for the Natural Resources Conservation Agency.

The population of monkeys has exploded due to dwindling predators, but drought has led to food shortages, Rinyadi said.

The monkeys have stolen crops and destroyed about 990 acres of farmland – including around the 7th-century Buddhist temple complex of Borobudur outside the sultanate of Yogyakarta.

Some have invaded villagers’ yards in search of fruit, vegetables and rice. Distressed farmers have used firecrackers and air rifles to chase them away.

Farmers are worried they are so occupied fighting off the monkeys they will not be able to tend their land, Rinyadi said.

“Monkeys are another threat to food production during this dry season,” Rinyadi said. …> go to article

There certainly appears to be something amiss in Central and East Java.  What does this have to do with Jakarta? Jakarta is the capitol of Indonesia. It is the center of national government, it is the center of the banking and communication sectors. Jakarta also produces and consumes a large percentage of the GDP.

Can you blame Jakarta for malnourished children, rampaging monkeys, the weather?

Jakarta Urban Blog’s focus is, of course, Jakarta but it would be amiss to think that Jakarta sits in isolation from distant events elsewhere in Indonesia and amiss to think that Jakarta sits in isolation of larger global events outside of Indonesia.

“Jakarta is coming”

The date is September 11, but not September, 11, 2001, it is September, 11, 1973. This is the date of the coup led by Augusto Pinochet and the CIA against the freely elected government of Salvador Allende. This was the date of the beginning of a dark night of torture and draconian economic policies which would last in Chile for the next seventeen years. The night spread its dark wings to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay and later to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Vibrant emerging economies and political systems would be overthrown in the name of “free markets” while tens of thousands of people were “disappeared” and hundrends of thousands tortured in the jails of CIA backed juntas.

This is the story of a new book which has come across my desk recently. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, Metropolitan Book, 2007, 558 pages.

From The Shock Doctrine:

“Suharto…had shown that if massive repression was used preemptively, the country would go into shock and resistance could be wiped out before it even took place. His use of terror was so merciless, so far beyond even the worst expectations, that a people who only weeks earlier had been collectively striving to assert their country’s independence were now sufficiently terrified that they ceded total control to Suharto and his henchmen. Ralph McGhee, a senior CIA operations manager during the years of the coup, said Indonesia was a “model operation…You can trace back all major, bloody events run from Washington to the way Suharto came to power. The success of that meant that it would be repeated, again, and again”.

The other crucial lesson from Indonesia had to do with the pre-coup partnership between Suharto and the Berkeley Mafia. Because they were ready to take up top “technocratic” positions in the new government and had already converted Suharto to their worldview, the coup did more than just get rid of a nationalist threat; it transformed Indonesia into one of the most welcoming environments for foreign multinationals in the world.

As momentum began to build toward Allende’s ouster, a chilling warning began appearing in red paint on the walls of Santiago. It said,  ‘Jakarta is coming’.”

The shock in Indonesia left perhaps one million dead. It was hailed by the CIA as the “perfect model” to be repeated “again and again”. The Berkeley Mafia, as Klein points out, were those Indonesian economists which were educated at the University of California at Berkeley since 1956 and funded by the Ford Foundation where they returned home to the University of Indonesia to “build a faithful copy of a Western-style” economics department.  After Suharto consolidated power key financial posts were filled by these Berkeley educated economists where they “passed laws allowing foreign companies to own 100 percent of these resources, handed out “tax holidays”, and within two years, Indonesia’s natural wealth – copper, nickle, hardwood, rubber, and oil – was being divided among the largest mining and energy companies in the world”.

But the Berkeley Mafia were small players compared to those which came out of the Chicago School of Economics under Milton Friedman. These were the people who carried the banner of the true economic orthodoxy, the so-called neoliberals, who advocated a “pure” laissez-faire economics, whose economic philosophy was the antithesis of that of John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith.

Friedman’s book Capitalism and Freedom “laid out what would become the global free-market rulebook and in the U.S., would form the economic agenda of the neoconservative movement.

First, governments must remove all rules and regulations standing in the way of the accumulation of profits. Second, they should sell off any assets they own that corporations could be running at a profit. And third, they should dramatically cut back funding of social programs… …Friedman’s vision coincided with precisely with with the interests of large multinationals, which by nature hunger for for vast new unregulated markets. In the first stage of capitalist expansion, that kind of ravenous growth was provided by colonialism- by “discovering” new territories and grabbing land without paying for it, then extracting riches without compensating local populations. Friedman’s war on the “welfare state” and “big government” held out the promise of a new font of riches- only this time, rather than conquering new territory, the state itself would be the new frontier, its public services and assets auctioned off for far less than they were worth”.

As Klein states in her introduction:

“Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by antidemocratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market “reforms“.

Reforms which were neither liberal, free, or democratic.

It was not just a matter of “regime change” that the CIA and the U.S. government was concerned with but also to apply, after appropriate shocks to the population, literal in terms of the torture employed and the economic hardships endured, a “pure” and “orthodox” economic theory.

These shocks, as Klein so well documents, were carried through into events as seemingly divergent as the Solidarity movement in Poland, Thatcher’s war in the Falklands, Tiananmen Sqaure, the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Asian economic crisis of 1997-1998, the Septemebr 11 attacks in the United States, and the war in Iraq. The shocks are not just limited to political or economic crisis but now are also those natural disasters such as the tsunami of 2004 or Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  These tragic events are now seen as opportunities to deregulate, privatize, cut back social services, and to turn a profit for the elite.  In the case of Iraq, the war has been privatized, the population “shocked and awed” and for those who oppose there awaits Abu Ghraib, the jails of Baghram, the torture of Guantanamo, or rendition into the void. This, in the name of profit and the free market.

Is this why children die from malnourishment in East Java, why monkeys run amok in Central Java, why the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund manufacture a world food crisis and speculate on the price of a barrel of oil?

Klein has written a remarkable book.  It is a book which exposes over thirty years of crimes perpetrated on the people of the world in the name of corporate profit. To expose this is not only courageous but gives us the tools to fight back. This is always the case when one is armed with the truth.

Naomi Klein

Democracy Now!

Focus on the Global South

UPDATE 6/15/2008

From: Bloomberg.com: Asia

Indonesia’s Mulyani to Head Economic Affairs, Jakarta Post Says

By Nesa Subrahmaniyan

June 15 (Bloomberg) — Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati has been appointed acting coordinating minister for economic affairs, the Jakarta Post reported, citing Sudi Silalahi, the cabinet secretary.

Mulyani, who will retain her post as finance minister, take over from Boediono, who has become head of the central bank, the newspaper said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed a decree for the appointment on June 19, the report said.

From: Perspective on World History and Current Events

Sri Mulyani Indrawati
Minister of National Development Planning
Chairperson of the National Planning Agency (Bappenas)

Name: Dr Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Profile: Born in Tanjungkarang, Lampung, on 26th August 1962, Mulyani received her doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois. She is an executive director of the International Monetary Fund, representing 12 economies in Southeast Asia. In 2001 Mulyani left for Atlanta, United States, to serve as a consultant with the U.S. Aid Agency USAID for programs to strengthen Indonesia’s autonomy. She lectured on the Indonesian economy at Georgia University. A prominent economist, Mulyani was appointed a member of the National Economic Council during Abdurrahman Wahid’s administration.

Source The Jakarta Post

In light of what has been said above I will leave this without comment.

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Jakarta (assignment)

 

 Photo by Osocio

This morning as I was reading through the news I came across the two articles below published by Xinhua News.  I have posted each of the articles here in full. Both articles appear to be wire stories orignating from The Jakarta Post.

Jakarta is always mentioned and written about as a city of contrasts.

 Violence against women rises in Indonesia …>go to site

 JAKARTA, March 8 (Xinhua) — Violence against women in Indonesia has steadily increased after nearly a decade of political reform, the Jakarta Post quoted the National Commission for Women’s Protection as saying here Saturday.

State institutions both in central and regional governments were among the main perpetrators through their discriminatory regulations, the report said.

Violence has increased despite the fact that the government has enacted 10 laws and signed three regional treaties to eliminate all forms of violence against women.

In a report on the state of women’s protection issued in conjunction with tje International Women’s Day, the commission highlighted 27 regional bylaws which it says discriminate against women, either through the criminalization of women or seeking to control women’s bodies.

“For example, there’s a regulation that forbids women from going out at night or others that determine how women should dress,” commissioner Arimbi Heroepoetri said.

She said that under these regulations women could easily be labeled, and punished, as “immoral” women simply because they went home late at night or wore tight clothes.

Tangerang municipality near Jakarta last year issued an ordinance banning women from going outside of their homes after 10p.m.

According to Arimbi, there has been a significant increase in the number of cases of domestic violence reported thanks to the law, which categorizes all acts of violence against women as criminal.

She said the sharpest increase in the number of reported cases of domestic violence occurred in 2005, with 16,615 reported cases, or almost four times the 4,310 cases reported in 2004.

The second article is: 

5 Indonesians on Forbes’ list of richest …>go to site

JAKARTA, March 8 (Xinhua) — Five Indonesian businessmen are among the 1,125 wealthiest people in the world listed by Forbes magazine.

The 58-year-old Sukanto Tanoto, owner of the Raja Garuda Mas group, is ranked 284th on the list with estimated assets of some 3.8 billion U.S. dollars, local English newspaper the Jakarta Post reported on Saturday.

Raja Garuda Mas group and its subsidiaries operate in a range of industries, including pulp and paper, palm oil plantations and construction.

Also on the Forbes list are Michael Hartono and Budi Hartono, owners of tobacco company PT Djarum. Their fortunes were estimatedat 2 billion dollars each.

Other Indonesians to make the list are Martua Sitorus, the owner of palm oil producer Wilmar International Holding, who is ranked at 652nd with 1.9 billion dollars, and Peter Sondakh, the owner of Rajawali Group, at 962nd with 1.2 billion dollars.

This year’s list includes 1,125 people with a total net worth of 4.4 trillion dollars.

There are 211 Asians on this year’s Forbes list, up from 160 the previous year. Apart from the five Indonesians, India has 53 people on the list, including four in the top 10, the Chinese Mainland has 42, China’s Hong Kong has 26 and Japan has 27.

Your assignment is to think of how and in what ways these two articles are connected.

Jakarta (informal) part 2

Photo by Quiseng 

Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Greek for oikos (house) and nomos (custom or law), hence “rules of the house(hold).” …> go to site

Economics at its most basic might be thought of as the ways in which we make a living. The economy can also be described in terms  of the relationships between supply and demand.

 The rules of the household (a few examples)

Begging

One evening while taking the new communter train from Jakarta to Depok with my friend Budi I noticed a man several cars down crawling along the floor of the train carriage. He would stop occasionally and collect a few coins or rupiah form the commuters. Others ignorded him.  As he approached where we were sitting I reached into my pocket for the stack of coins which I had been accumulating through the day.  He held out his hand and I gave him the coins.  Budi did nothing. The man moved on.  Budi then told me, “Maybe if you follow him home you will see what a nice house he lives in“.  I took this to mean that the man was either faking his disability or he was some sort of professional beggar working his audience.  Shortly after that the train made a stop and a young blind man with his mother walked on board.  He had strapped on his back a small portable karioki machine and proceeded to sing into his microphone with a very good voice.  At this Budi reached into his pocket and handed over his coins.  Budi could tell the difference.  I could not. It is still hard to this day.

There are an estimated 200,000 street vendors in Jakarta each month they pay out about $1.5 billion rupiah for protection, in extortion, or for illegal fees. There are perhaps 80,000 street kids who make their living by begging.

In Spetmeber 2007, the Jakarta City Council approved a bylaw that bans busking, begging and street hawking as well as banning people from giving money to beggars, vendors and hawkers.

Initiated by the city’s departing governor, Sutioyoso, the bylaw says that anyone who is caught giving money to beggars, and others of their ilk, will be fined of 50 million rupiah.From World Street Children News …>go to site 

Mohammad Yazid, Jakarta

“A beggar recently scolded my wife for refusing to give him some money at a busy intersection in Cempaka Putih (famously known as Coca-Cola intersection), Central Jakarta.

“How stingy, so what’s the headscarf for?” he said to my wife. I told my wife not to roll down the car window because I was afraid he was a crook.

Bluffing and smirking have become forms of pressure exerted by beggars operating at nearly every crossroad in Jakarta.

They employ various other methods at other places such as public transportation and residential areas. Some use the conventional style of pretending to be starving or seriously ill, while others apply the criminal way of extorting money from passengers by appearing as alcoholics or newly released convicts.

Women have an effective trick of approaching benevolent people and exploiting the innocent looks of children under the age of five and carrying “hired infants” at Jakarta intersections.

There is no official data on the total number of beggars in Jakarta, but according to Suciardi, head of the commercial sex rehabilitation service at the Jakarta Social Welfare Office, their numbers increase by 40 percent during Ramadhan through Idul Fitri, from the 2,295 normally found in the city.

Chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection, Seto Mulyadi, said the number of street children in Greater Jakarta reached 80,000.

Amid the prevailing economic difficulties and different mishaps affecting Indonesia, many people choose begging as their profession, because they often make more than those who work at government offices or private businesses. Earning about Rp 50,000 to Rp 75,000 daily on average, in a month a beggar can make Rp 1.5 million, far more than Jakarta’s minimum wage of Rp 900,000″.

 Black Markets

Begging, of course, is small change compared to Jakarta’s black markets. Havoscope Global Black Market Indexes lists  the market value of Indonesia’s black market at $3.32 billion (US). The counterfeit goods market value (books, cable, music, movies, and computer software) is listed at $458 million (US).  Black market handphone sales may be as high as $370 million (US). The value of the illegal drug trade is not listed but may also be in the millions of dollars as is indicated by the  recent incident of 600,000 ecstasy pills seized from a shop-house in Cengkareng, Tangerang district, Banten province, last February 26.

Human Trafficking

 from Human Trafficking.org

“Indonesia is primarily a source, but also a transit and destination country for human trafficking. UNICEF estimates that 100,000 women and children are trafficked annually for commercial sexual exploitation in Indonesia and abroad, 30 percent of the female prostitutes in Indonesia are below 18, and 40,000-70,000 Indonesian children are victims of sexual exploitation. The East Java Children’s Protection Agency estimates that at least 100,000 women and children are trafficked annually from, through, and to East Java.

Indonesian women and children are trafficked for sexual and labor exploitation in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and the Middle East.  A significant number of Indonesian women voluntarily migrate to work as domestic servants but are later coerced into abusive conditions. Some Indonesian women are recruited by false promises of employment and are later coerced into prostitution or forced labor. Ethnic Chinese women and teenage girls in the West Kalimantan district are recruited as mail-order brides for men in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Indonesian women from the Riau Islands, Bali, and Lombok are used for sex tourists from Malaysia and Singapore”.

 from Fact book on Global Sexual Exploitation – Indonesia

“A 1992 survey showed that one out of 10 prostituted persons was under age 17, and that one out of five of those older than that age said they took up prostitution before they reached 17. Dario Agnote, “Sex trade key part of S.E. Asian economies, study says,” Kyodo News, 18 August 1998

The sex industry accounts for an estimated 1.2 billion dollars to 3.3 billion dollars in annual earnings, or between 0.8 and 2.4% of the country’s GDP, the study said. In Jakarta alone, prostitution-related activities are estimated to be worth 91 million dollars annually. Dario Agnote, “Sex trade key part of S.E. Asian economies, study says,” Kyodo News, 18 August 1998

There are between 140,000 and 230,000 prostituted persons in Indonesia (1993-1994 estimates). Prostituted persons are mainly adult women, but there are also male, transvestite and child prostitutes, both girls and boys. International Labor Organization. Dario Agnote, “Sex trade key part of S.E. Asian economies, study says,” Kyodo News, 18 August 1998

There are at least 650,000 prostitutes in Indonesia. In 1998 there were 150,000 registered prostitutes compared to 72,000 in 1995. 30 percent are children. (Yogyakarta Free Children Society, Mohammad Farid, “Indonesian economic crisis boosts prostitution,” Reuters, 26 July 1998

There were 65,582 registered prostitutes in 1994. The highest estimate is 500,000 women in prostitution. CATW – Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific

About 200 prostituted women in Jakarta, Indonesia, protesting plans by the mayor to close down their complex carried signs stating “I did not want to become a prostitute. The economic difficulties have made me a prostitute.” “Indonesian prostitutes join wave of protests,” Reuters, 2 July 1998

Earnings from prostitution average $600 a month in Indonesia and are higher than in other unskilled jobs. International Labor Organization, Elif Kaban, “UN labour body urges recognition of sex industry,” Reuters, 18 August 1998

Particularly because of the economic crises in Asia, women in Thailand and Indonesia are increasingly forced into prostitution as the only means of survival. “Women Workers Are Last in, First Out,” Associated Press, 30 April 1998

In Indonesia the economic crisis has driven thousands of women into prostitution for economic survival. Although “streetwalkers” are prohibited in Jakarta, there is no law prohibiting the sale of sexual services. Yogyakarta Free Children Society, Mohammad Farid, “Indonesian economic crisis boosts prostitution,” Reuters, 26 July 1998

The sex industry takes in US$ 1.2 – US$ 3.6 billion. CATW – Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific

The city of Surbaya, with tens of thousands of prostitutes, is the largest sex industry center in South East Asia, which consists of hectares and hectares of modest houses with large, plate-glass windows where bored girls sit waiting: “streets full of human aquariums”. It is also a magnet for the divorced and dispossessed women of the strict Islamic villages. The sex industry serves as a source of women for prostitution in provincial towns, through a black market network of pimps. Louise Williams, “Sex in the Cemetary,” Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 1997

30% of the girls in Semarang, Indonesia who are homeless are forced into prostitution for survival. University Diponegoro study, Nicholas D. Kristof “Asian Crisis Deals Setbacks to Women”.

Other sites (grim and enlightening) addressing this issue are at:

 Child Prostituion - Indonesia

Intersections: Traditional and Emergent Sex Work in Urban Indonesia

Then there are these sites. 

Best Ladies Escort Agency in Jakarta

Travel Sex Guide Indonesia

Jakarta After Dark

And…finally

from AFP Penises and Prayer Mats: Its Sexual Healing Indonesian Style

“A consultation with Haji Baban is an encounter with the arcane. Sitting cross-legged in semi-darkness, the patient is asked to detail his wishes with the visual aid of a selection of carved wooden phalluses.

Then comes the diagnosis, delivered after a contemplative silence.

Solemnly, Haji Baban intones that the client’s appendage is “fairly average,” and offers to conjour up a six-centimetre (2.3-inch) extension.

The prescription for such whopping growth is a 10-day course of eating and drinking mystery concoctions and secret potions, with the first dose of bitter berries to be taken immediately, washed down with dark brown liquid.

An assistant then brings a phallus-shaped bamboo tube containing a roll of sticky coconut rice that has to be swallowed whole to avoid what Haji Baban describes ominously as “terrible genital consequences”.

Haji Baban ends the consultation with a vegetable oil that the client must promise to apply daily with a specific hand action from base to tip. And no eating green bananas or citronella, he orders.

The daily cost for treatment is between 700,000 and one million rupees (70-100 dollars), depending on the options selected.

This is a hefty sum for many in Indonesia but the imposing mansions being built around Caringin seem to indicate that plenty of men are willing to pay.

A local motorcycle taxi driver gestures to the newly-built homes and says: “They belong to Mak Erot.”

A Last Note

From begging to the black market to human trafficking to penis enlargement. Such are the rules of the Indonesian household. 

I suppose I should be editorializing or moralizing at this point.  In this post I have moved from  the lighter side (is there one?) to the darker side (most certainly there is one) of the informal economies of Jakarta.   I now see that this was sort of an inevitable progression. As it is with all households everything is connected to everything else. It is there in the tension between the rich and poor, the politics and economics of gender, the educated and the uneducated, those with power and those who are disenfranchised. 

As Mary S. Zurbuchen writes in Images of Culture and National Development in Indonesia: The Cockroach Opera, “if the poor of Jakarta are like cockroaches, then these purportedly disgusting insects, instead of signifying filth and being driven from sight, must be welcomed. Victorious and pervasive, they persist everywhere, from the sprawling marbel villas of luxury housing estates like Pondok Indah to the immense slums of Tanjung Priok. The roach should not be counted a symbol of the lowlife here but rather a ubiquitous survivor of thousands of fantasies of ultimate extermination”.   

And still, time after time Susan Abeyasekere’s words from Jakarta: A History just won’t go away, “the central fallacy [of Jakarta] which has persisted from 1619 to the present is that it is possible to create a city for the privileged few, cut off from the countryside and the majority of the poor”.  

This goes to the who, what, why, and where of Jakarta’s informal economies. And it is clear, as the reality of the city declares,  that it is not possible to create a city for “the privileged few”.

It is true for Jakarta as it is for any place else you can point to on the planet.

Jakarta (money, money, money)

Photo: The Jakarta Post

Welfare minister tops Indonesian rich list: Forbes

12 hours ago

JAKARTA (AFP) — Indonesia’s welfare minister and his family, under fire for their company’s role in an oozing mud volcano that has displaced thousands, has topped Forbes Asia’s 2007 Indonesia rich list, the magazine said Thursday.

Aburizal Bakrie and his family saw their net worth blow out to 5.4 billion dollars this year, up from 1.2 billion dollars in 2006 when they were sixth on the list, according to the title’s December 24 edition.

The largest contributor to their wealth gain came from surging stock prices in Bakrie Group’s largest holding, coal producer Bumi Resources, it reported.

Bakrie has faced sustained criticism over the role his part-owned company Lapindo Brantas played in triggering the mud volcano in Sidoarjo, East Java, which began spurting in May 2006 during exploratory gas drilling by Lapindo.

While many experts say the company’s negligence led to the flow, Lapindo maintains that it was caused by a nearby earthquake.

Some 10,000 victims have been told to accept compensation from Lapindo for their land, with no payout for other losses such as houses and material goods. …> read full article here